Passage of Secrets
by Joker236
Summary: Two demigods and an idiot to possibly save the world.  They face ghosts, gay pirates, and lots more.  Will they succeed?
1. Lanty Meets Pretty Boy

**Well, Thia and I were writing this story, then we got into an argument, so then we kind of stopped writing this and I deleted it. But now this story is back and better than ever! Plus, we have great quotes from Marsy. He's such an idiot!**

Lanty Meets Pretty Boy

**Atalanta's Point of View**

"Ugh, first day of seventh grade," I sigh to my twin, Ilythia. "Can't they make these school years shorter? It's not like we do anything."

My twin shakes her head and rolls her eyes. Always the patient one. "Take advantage of it. At least you don't have the worst of this stupid dyslexia."

"Yeah, but you have it easy! You can't see letters very well, but I have the serious ADHD problem! I can barely sit still in most classes. Then I get yelled at, and then sent outside, and if I'm lucky, I'll go to the principal's office!" I beam in a cheerfully sarcastic way.

"Well, maybe we'll get some cool teachers."

"Have you heard those horror stories from some people who have older siblings?" I gape in astonishment. "You wouldn't be so optimistic if you had! Apparently, the science teacher is a lunatic. He even has an eye patch!" I whisper to Thia. "The English teacher is strict! The math teacher randomly breaks into German and you can't understand what she's saying! And I hear that Mrs. Paul is a monster of a history teacher!"

"You're just exaggerating, Lanty! Mrs. Paul is a . . . very . . . nice teacher and the math teacher is AUSTRALIAN!"

"Big deal!" I groan, throwing my hands up in the air.

"You're so dramatic!"

"Why, thank you," I say, mocking a bow. The bus pulls up to our stop, and we climb on. Thia and I walk about midway back before settling in a seat. Ugh! It smells worse than last year. Buses smell like sweaty middle schoolers crammed in a small room filled with chewed gum and spoiled milk! I try to stop myself from gagging. Of course, the biggest bully in the bus is Samuel Thomas. Yeah. Him with his big, fat head and his big, fat ego! All he does is terrorize little kids. And of course he gets away with it! Just because the bus driver is half-deaf and could care less whether we kill each other or not. Over last year, I'd learned to stay away from Big Sammy. But of course, he never learns to stay away from me.

"Lanty, I had the _weirdest_ dream last night," Thia whispers to me. I can just barely hear her.

"Oh, really? I had a weird dream last night, too!" I whisper back to her.

"What was yours about?"

"I was at this weird place. It looked like a summer camp. But there were all these children there. Some of them looked similar. And there was this centaur, you know, like the ones we studied in English last year. There were also satyrs and pegasi! It was phenomenally picturesque, but it was completely unrealistic."

"Lanty? Why can't you stop using those large words?" Thia whines. "I already know that you're good at vocabulary."

"You're the one who solves math problems in two seconds flat! AND you have a photographic memory."

"Yeah, but on top of the vocabulary, you are an amazing writer. You always win those writing contests."

"You could probably write, too, if you weren't so seriously dyslexic!" I exclaim. "You never told me what your dream was about," I lower my voice.

"Oh, it was . . . odd. I was sitting in a classroom. I know that it was the history classroom. But there's this boy next to me. I don't know him, but I would remember his face anywhere. He was actually kind of . . . well, not hot, but . . . . beautiful, like, guy beautiful or something."

"Thia, guy beautiful is handsome," I state seriously.

Thia rolls her eyes. "Whatever. He had sandy-blonde hair and teal eyes. He looks at me like he knows something is about to happen. And then, the teacher morphs into this creature. I really didn't get a good glimpse, but this creature attacked us. The guy immediately sort of leaped into action, and he had this scepter. He easily killed the monster. And that's when the dream ended."

"Whoa! That's freaky!" I gasp. "I wish I had cool dreams like you. Not dreams about cute guys, but monsters attacking me. All I got was creepy myths and summer camps."

"No, my dream was _horrible_!"

"At least something happened! I just stood there the whole time!" I stand up with a few dramatic gestures. Unfortunately, the bus jolts to a stop and I'm thrown into the seat. "Ow," I mutter, rubbing my shoulder. A bunch of people pile onto the bus. Most of them look younger than me. Only one boy looks to be about my age.

Ilythia grips my arm with a death grip. "Lanty, that's him! That's the guy with the scepter in my dream last night!" she whispers in my ear. If she hadn't been whispering, she would have been screaming.

"The guy beautiful one?" I ask, sort of dazed from being thrown into a dirty, cracked bus seat.

"Of course the guy beautiful one! There wasn't any other guy in my dream!" Thia says, tightening her grip on my arm. There will probably be red finger marks around my wrist until I die.

"Okay, Thia, I get it, but can you LET GO OF MY ARM!" I exclaim rather loudly. Some people in the bus turned to look at us, including Pretty Boy. He grins at me (or is he grinning at Thia?) before turning back to the front of the bus.

And . . . cue the bully! Big Sammy decides that now is the time to check out the fresh meat for this year. He stomps up to the front of the bus and glares at the squirts. Pretty Boy glances up from his seat to see Sam looming over the munchkins. Samuel laughs harshly and grabs the pigtails of one little girl. She looked to be only in fifth grade. He pulls her off her seat by the pigtails. "Hello, little girl," he coos mockingly. "And what's your name?"

"My-my-my n-name is Lily," she whimpers.

Sam pouts. "How precious. And do you know what today is, Lily?"

"Y-y-your birthday?" she asks.

"Oh, no, but it is a special day. Guess again."

"I-I-I d-don't know," she says.

Samuel laughs coldly. "It's the day that you get introduced to bullying," Sam brings his arm back.

"STOP!" Pretty Boy shouts.

Big Sammy drops the girl back on her seat and swivels on his heel. He stalks up to Pretty Boy like an elephant. "What are you going to do about it?" Sam snarls. "Are you going to be the hero?"

"That depends. If need be, I'll play the hero. But I'd rather just do this the easy way," Pretty Boy smirks.

"Do you think you're funny or awesome or something?" Big Sammy growls.

"No. I _know_ I'm funny and awesome and something." This guy is ARROGANT!

"Yeah, let's see how awesome you are when I mess up your face!" Big Sammy swings his arm at Pretty Boy, who ducks to avoid it. Pretty Boy sticks his tongue out at Big Sammy.

"Ugh, you're such an idiot! Don't you know to run and hide!" I shout. I grab a pencil and throw it at Big Sammy. I don't know who I dislike more, Sammy or Egomaniac, but Sam has been torturing kids for too long. Sammy has his hand outstretched to grab Pretty Boy. But, my pencil catches that loose flap of skin between the bully's thumb and forefinger. It pierces straight through the skin and out the other side. The pencil is firmly embedded in the skin, half of it coming out one side, half of it coming out the other. Big Sammy howls and cries. I am so going to be in trouble for this.

I cover my face with my hands, but Pretty Boy is staring at me. WHAT A CREEP! He has no expression whatsoever on his face. I glance up at him with one eye but turn back to my conversation with Thia.

"What was that?" she whispers.

"Um, I'm just tired of Sam getting to bully everyone with impunity."

"But, I mean, the pencil," she stutters. I glance over to where Big Sammy is nursing his hand and whimpering. "That was amazing! It went straight through his hand."

"I don't know, Thia. I just got lucky of something," I frown.

"Lanty," she murmurs.

I look at her and shake my head. "I don't know what happened there, okay?" Thia nods, and we continue the bus ride in silence.

Once the bus reaches the school, all of the kids pile out. We crowd into the hallway, and some people glance at the sheet of paper they received over the summer about their lockers and combinations. I had no trouble with this because Ilythia and I always have side by side lockers. She memorizes our locker combinations. I pay her back for opening my locker by reading the English books out loud to her. It's a pretty even trade, because I have less trouble with my dyslexia than her. We have the same classes, too, for some reason. I think the school likes to keep us together because we're twins or we're so similar. All of our classes are the same, minute for minute.

Thia and I place our books in our lockers and walk to homeroom. We are stopped before we get there. Pretty Boy.

"Hello," he says with a distinct, clipped Yankee, almost British, accent. Yes, Yankees do sound different from Carolinians.

"Hello," I say curtly.

"Hey," Thia practically melts.

"I would like to say that I was very fascinated by that display of skills on the bus," Pretty Boy compliments.

"Oh, yeah," I mutter.

"Have you ever displayed similar talents?"

"Not that I can remember."

"Oh."

"Well, see ya, Pretty Boy," I wave.

"Oh, no, no, no. My name is not Pretty Boy," Pretty Boy corrects. "My full name is Marsyas Achilles Wilkes, but you may call me Mar."

"Are you sure I can't call you Marsy?" I tease.

"Oh, let's not be rude," Thia admonishes.

I stick out my tongue at her. "Charming," Marsy says in his clipped accent.

"Well, we must be on our way, Mar. There's school to go to and everything," Thia giggles.

"Bye, Marsy," I grin, pulling Thia to homeroom.

After homeroom, we have algebra. This is my low point. After algebra is English. One of my favorites by far. So, the algebra teacher is Australian. But she has an accent! I walk to English class and sit down in my seat. Oh, wonderful, Marsy is in this class.

"Oh, hello," he says in his accent. "It appears that you know my name, but I have not been acquainted with yours."

"Oh, yes," Thia grins. "My name is Ilythia Calliope Clark. You may call me Thia."

"Well, Marsy, I guess I'm Atalanta Thalia Clark," I smile sarcastically. "Most people call me Lanty."

"Oh, yes. Thank you, Thia and Lanty."

"Yes, Marsy," I joke.

He walks away. I make faces at him when he isn't looking. Yankees are by far the most fun to joke about.

"Isn't he amazing?" Thia says in a daze.

"Thia, just be quiet!"I groan.

We continue through the rest of the day. Marsy is only in four of our classes: English, science, art and history. I am assigned to sit next to him during science. We make fun of Mr. Burns's eye patch. During history, he sits next to Thia. She flirts, and he just gazes off in the distance. In art, all three of us talk a lot. My schedule is algebra, English, break, history, Spanish, lunch, study hall, science, physical education, and art. This school year is going to be something.


	2. Thia Flames a Demented Care Bear

**Here's the next chapter. Marsy loves his sweater. He loves it so much that he wants to skip in it!**

Thia Flames A Demented Care Bear

It is right after last period. Thia and I are both ready to go home. Well, maybe not so much Thia, but that's only because she wants to stay and talk to _Marsy_. He's such a freak! And he thinks he's better than everyone. Well, Marsy would have been dead meat if I hadn't thrown that pencil at Big Sammy this morning. Marsy acts as if he had some great plan that just hadn't been set in to action yet! I'm still going to call him Pretty Boy.

"Hello, Thia and Lanty," Marsy says in his stupid accent.

"Hi, Mar," Thia waves with a stupid grin on her face.

"Pretty Boy," I growl, nodding at him.

"Brainiac."

"Ego-centric."

Marsy laughs a bit and shakes his head. Why does he keep doing that? First it sounds like he hates me, and then it sounds like I amuse him! I roll my eyes at him and sigh. Boys are sooooo confusing! This is why I don't like them. Thia, on the other hand . . .

"You're so funny, Mar," she giggles. I make a gagging face. Marsy sees it and grins. Ugh, what an idiot!

"Well, as much as I would love to watch Thia make a fool of herself, I must be on my way. I have an important meeting," I smirk towards the two of them.

"Yes, you're math tutoring session is oh-so-important," Marsy mocks.

I scoff at him. "At least I know how to stand up in a fight! You would have been pummeled if I hadn't intervened in that fight this morning."

"Ah, yes, of course," Marsy gushes sarcastically. "Thank you for doing practically nothing except dooming that pencil to be stuck in Big Sammy's hand."

I giggle at that. It's kind of funny. "Whatever, Pretty Boy. I do, in fact, have to go find this one kid who promised to help me with my math," I wave, walking away.

"Well, I could help you," Marsy says quickly. I spin on my heel.

"Why would you want to help me with algebra?" I ask slowly, walking up to him.

Marsy shrugs. "I dunno. You just need help. Algebra is one of my good subjects. And you can help me with English and history."

"Why do you need help with school? You're the model student!" I exclaim, wildly flailing my arms.

"That's because the teachers haven't seen my sloppy work, yet. They've only seen my manner, and I was brought up well."

"Is that gloating about yourself or a put down to me?" I threaten, glaring at him.

"Take it whichever way you'd like. But I can tutor you."

"Okay, I'll tutor you, you'll tutor me. But I must warn you, I'm ADHD."

"Oh, really. By coincidence, I am, too."

"You wouldn't happen to have dyslexia?" Thia bats her eyelashes.

"By Zeus! Do you both have ADHD _and_ dyslexia?" Marsy asks.

"By Zeus! We do!" I say, mocking his outburst. He lifts his eyebrows.

"Curious."

"Who says 'by Zeus!'?" I ask. What a weird thing to say. Maybe it's a Yankee or British thing or something like that. Wait, Zeus is Greek.

"I dunno. I do, I guess."

"Strange kid," I mutter. He does that stupid look-at-me-and-grin thing.

"Is there something about having ADHD and dyslexia?" Thia asks. She looks up at Marsy with hope.

"There can be something special. Ah, that would explain . . ." Marsy's voice trails off.

"You're not telling us everything, are you, Marsy?" I ask.

"Of course I am."

"No, you're not. Your eyes lifted slightly as if you were debating what to tell us. Your weight is shifting ever so slightly to the left. And your fingers are twitching. All signs of somebody not telling the whole truth."

"I am telling you everything I know about the case of having both ADHD and dyslexia," Marsy says calmly.

"You are not!"

"I am, too!"

"Are not!"

"Am, too!"

"Not!"

"Too!"

I huff. "Fine. Wow me, Pretty Boy."

"Oh, so you think I'm pretty?"

"NO! And that's not exactly a compliment!" I groan. This guy just doesn't get it, does he?

"Whatever, Lanty. Or how about , since I know you're ADHD now, I can call you Spaz!" he grins.

"Voldemort," I mutter.

"Really, Spaz. Did you just call me Voldemort?"

"Why, yes, in fact, I did."

"I don't think you're like Voldemort!" Thia pipes in.

"Well I do," I spit. (Not literally, it's a figure of speech!)

Marsy rolls his eyes. "So, are you going to my house for tutoring or shall I come to yours?"

"Oh, you should come to our house. I have to call my stepmother," I say casually fishing out my cell phone.

"NO!" Marsy says. He knocks my cell phone out of my hand.

"What?!?" I hiss.

Marsy looks around and shrugs. "I just . . . don't trust cell phones. I . . uh, once got electrocuted slightly by one."

"Oh, okay, whatever. If it freaks you out so much, I'll call from one of the school phones."

Marsy, Thia, and I walk over to Mr. VanDoney's room. He is the Spanish teacher.

"Mr. VanDoney, may we borrow your phone?" Thia asks politely. I let her deal with the politeness. I deal with manipulating people.

Mr. VanDoney looks up from his pie. "Oh, yes, Thia, you may borrow the phone. I have to go to a faculty meeting, so if you could just close the door when you leave." The Spanish teacher picked up his pie and trudged out of the room. That guy liked pie. He had it wherever he went. Isn't that just a little bit odd for a teacher to have such an obsession. His rotund form displayed the addiction quite obviously.

"I'll call," I volunteer.

"Good. You're better at manipulating people to do exactly what you want," Thia admits. She relinquishes the phone and it is transferred to my grasp. I dial my home phone number.

Thia and I have a stepmother. Our father didn't have the guts to marry our real mother or something like that. She moved to Italy or Greece or something. But I think Dad mentions her living in New York now. Our stepmother is really nice. Soon, we'll have a little half-brother. We also have a stepbrother. It's quite a houseful. There's our dad, Leonard Reginald Clark, and our stepmom, Sarah Marie Clark. Then we have our stepbrother, Lucas Henry Peterson. He wanted to keep his father's name because he feels no relation toward us or something. Lucas is kind of an odd kid. I swear that he eats tape! And he rubs butter in his hair. I think he might be a lunatic.

"Hello?" my stepmother answers.

"Hey, Laura. Thia and I met this guy at school today. He claims that he's good at math and can help tutor me as long as I tutor him in English. Could he come over for a few hours?"

"I guess so. As long as you're just studying. Could you pass the phone to Thia?"

"Sure, Laura." I cover the mouthpiece with my hand and whisper to Thia, "She wants to speak to you." Thia takes it from me. I can already predict half of the conversation.

"Hey, Laura," Thia says rather shyly. There is a pause. "No, no, school was great." Another pause. "Of course I'll help make dinner. Yes, her night can be tomorrow night. I know that Lanty can be rather stubborn with tutors." My eyes widen and Marsy smirks at me. I give him the harshest glare possible. "NO!" Thia says loudly, her pale cheeks turning red. Laura must have asked if she liked Pretty Boy over there. "Of course, Laura. We'll be right home. The buses have already left, so we're going to have to walk. You need canned soup?" Pause. "Oh, yes, of course, for Lucas. Bye, Laura. See you in a few minutes."

"Laura said you can come over," I whisper to Marsy as Ilythia is talking on the phone.

"Okay," Ilythia calls. "Mar can come over, and Laura says he can stay for dinner if he likes. You probably want to call your parents, though. Lanty, tomorrow is your night to make dinner. And we have to stop by Wal-mart to pick up some canned soup for Lucas."

"Who is Lucas?" Marsy asks.

"Oh, he's our stepbrother."

"Stepbrother? Are you parents divorced?"

"Our mom and our dad never got married. Our mom is either in New York or Greece."

"Interesting," Marsy mutters. We are walking to Wal-mart right now. It's only about five minutes from the school.

"Yeah. We've always wanted to meet her, though. I bet she's a famous actress or a poet or an author," I say, clasping my hands together.

"You've always been one for the dramatics," Thia sighs. "She's probably a business woman or works at a McDonalds'. And we all know that you're going to be the author of this family."

"Do you dream of being an author?" Marsy asks me.

"I do on occasion. Most of the time I am obliged to do schoolwork instead of writing," I smile slightly.

Marsy nods. "Are you any good?"

"Uh . . ."

"Are you kidding me?" Thia bursts. "She's amazing! Lanty's just modest."

"You're the one who denies your mathematical genius!" I counter.

"So, you're both incredibly smart, correct?" Marsy says, lifting his eyebrows.

Thia nods. "Yes!" She is lovestruck. "Unless you don't like smart girls! I mean, we're . . ."

"We make fairly good grades," I shrug, managing to cover up her faux pas. "Look, we're here!"

They look up and see the large building proudly proclaiming its name: Wal-Mart.

"Whelp, I guess we have to go in," Marsy says casually. I nod and Thia just hyperventilates. Sorry, overexaggeration! We walk into the incredibly large store. Everything is spread in front of us. We head over to the soup aisle of the grocery store section. Thia walks up and gets the soup from the shelf. She tosses it to me, and I catch it behind my back. Ooh, a game! I baseball-pitch the soup can to Marsy. He juggles it for a few seconds before throwing it back to me. Thia does a flip in the air and catches it. Wait, she can do a flip?!?

"Thia, since when have you been able to do a flip?!?!?!?!?!?" I shriek.

"Um, I don't know. Just now," she blushes shyly. Marsy is looking at the two of us like we're prize sheep or something and he has to judge us. Thia quickly tosses the soup can to me. She backs off. I throw it to Marsy. He throws it back to me. I instinctively decide not to catch it. I do a back-flip and kick the soup can before landing on my feet. What just happened? I was a little off in kicking it to Marsy. It flies straight into some taller person that was just innocently picking up groceries. The person turns around.

"Big Sammy?!?" I gasp. He smirks at me.

"In the flesh." I roll my eyes. Stupid cocky bully. I glance at his now pencil-free hand. There isn't even a bandage or a puncture wound on it! I could have sworn that pencil went straight through that part of his hand! "What are you staring at?" Samuel asks.

"Nothing," I mutter.

"So, why did you just hit me in the back of the head with a soup can?"

"It was an accident."

"Just like the pencil thing this morning?" he glares.

"Wait, so that did happen?!? Why does your hand not have a puncture wound?" I gape.

Sammy's lips curl up slightly. "Oh, well, I'll show you." Suddenly, Sammy crumples onto the ground. We all practically scream. Right where he was, there is a smoke-like figure. Its eyes glow a bright red, like fire. The ghost (I guess) has no formed legs, just a wisp of deformity. The entire being is inky black. Any movement causes it to ripple.

"Wh-wh-what are you?" Marsy stutters.

"I think you know," the ghost glares, which is really creepy considering it has fire-red eyes. Or . . . blood-red eyes.

"Oh-oh-oh. I-I-I-I mean wh-who are y-y-you?"

Who? It's a GHOST! I could care less whose ghost or what's ghost. Shouldn't we be running now? Marsy seems to have no intentions of moving! And Thia looks like she's contemplating fainting into Marsy's arms. UGH! Do I have to do EVERYTHING around here? I grab Thia's arm and pull.

"I am Sisyphus," the ghost rasps.

"The cleverest king that ever lived," Marsy mutters.

"Exactly. Well, as much as I LOVE small talk, I'm actually here to kill you. So, you guys can stand there and let me do this painlessly, or you can run and I'll make it a lot more torturous."

"Um, we're going to run," I says confidently.

"Have it your way," Sisyphus shrugs. He moves toward the shelf. Suddenly, his entire body is dragged into a bottle of syrup. "CURSES!" he screams, except his voice sounds sugary sweet. The syrup bottle falls off the shelf and begins to roll toward us. Time to have fun with a syrup bottle chasing us. I place my foot just three inches in front of the bottle. During each roll, I move it back a bit. My foot is close to the bottle, but they never touch. The ghost comes back out of the syrup.

"Now we run," I say, grabbing the arms of Marsy and Thia. We run through the Wal-mart. Now, we're in the appliances section. I look around. No ghost. A head pops through the floor. Spoke too soon. Thia screams. The ghost appears fully and cackles when it sees us. But it's body is sucked into a lamp. The light flickers on and off. Wow, he really needs some anger help! The lamp advances on us, floating. This just keeps getting creepier. We run and end up in the garden section.

"I think we'll be okay for a few minutes," Marsy pants.

"Really?" I glare. "We're being chased by a maniacal lamp and you think we'll be OKAY?!?"

"It could be worse. Imagine if we were being chased by Typhus. That would be a lot worse."

"Can we have some answers here?" Thia grins flirtatiously. We're being attacked by inanimate objects and she still has enough sanity to flirt? I roll my eyes and sigh. And . . . CUE GHOST! The lamp floats into the garden section. Thia screams and clutches to Marsy. Suddenly, the lamp crashes to the ground. I jump slightly at the loud noise. Sisyphus comes out. His red eyes are the size of saucers now. And they look REALLY angry. Oh no! His form floats near us. He comes face to face with me. I glance into his eyes.

Big mistake. I see my father with a woman. They are laughing and talking about highly intellectual topics. Then, I see the woman going away. She runs to the Empire State Building. I see her standing on a cloud. She walks up to a beautiful palace. And suddenly she writes and writes and writes. She finishes the manuscript and stuffs it into a knapsack. Then, I see her walk back to my father. He is in our house. He opens the door and she goes into the house. I watch her pull out the scroll. She moves her finger down the side of the paper. The woman says something to my father. He copies her motion and glides his finger over the other side of the scroll. I glance at it, but it is not a scroll, but a baby. A baby boy. The scene twists. The woman and my dad are next to an even longer scroll. They both ran their fingers over it, but this time at the same time. Two identical babies replaced the scroll. They were girls. What is this? Is that me and Thia?

I am jolted out of the vision. Marsy pulls me away. "What did you see?" he frowns.

"Uh," I say nervously. The ghost is currently being pulled into a hose. He disappears and the hose turns on. It writhes in an odd dance before forcibly spraying us. Thia shrieks. Marsy and I grab her arms and run. We make our way all the way to the toy section.

"Toy section?" Marsy says incredulously.

"I couldn't think of anything!" I defend myself. He rolls his eyes. Dang it, we both do that a lot! The ghost comes. Surprise, surprise. But this time it's an actual ghost. "So, any way we can destroy this thing or send it back to wherever?"

"Um, yeah, we have to throw Greek fire at it."

"Uh, yeah, Wal-mart carries about everything . . . EXCEPT FREAKIN' GREEK FIRE!" I scream.

"Chill. I have some in my pocket."

"And you couldn't have told us this ten minutes ago?!?"

"Well, I forgot." I punch him in the shoulder. The ghost is now in a volleyball. Okay, I can't stop giggling at this. What's next?

"You will perish, Atalanta Thalia Clark!" the volleyball hissed. I grin and wave.

"Do you have this Greek fire ready?" I ask, turning to Marsy.

"NO! Distract it!" he demands. I turn back to the ghost.

"Hey, Mr. Ghosty-person! Who cuts your hair?" Marsy gives me that What-the-heck? look. I shrug and turn back to the ghost. He's bouncing towards me. I take off and end up in the middle of three-year-old land.

"I'm going to get you!" Sisyphus growls. His ghost form is out now. He stalks toward me. But is hindered. By being pulled into the MOST embarrassing form possible.

I crack up at the sight of an evil, maniacal, demented . . . Care Bear. This is SO going on a blog. Well, maybe not. I really wouldn't know how to explain it. "Come here, Atalanta!" the Care Bear demands.

"I don't think I will," I say, grinning cheekily. Time to get back to Marsy. I run back to the aisle he is in.

"The Greek fire is READY!" he shouts.

"About time!"

"You don't have to be so cross," Thia remarks. Why does she keep protecting Pretty Boy? Oh, right, he's her soon-to-be boyfriend or something. The ghost makes another appearance. He's still a Care Bear.

"I'll get rid of him!" Marsy declares valiantly. He runs forward.

"Uh, Marsy? The Greek fire?" I call, pointing to the Greek fire at my feet.

"Oh, right!" he yells, running back.

"I'll just bring it to you!" I say, carrying the bag of Greek fire. "You know, if it wasn't for me, you would already have died twice today! I hope I get some sort of thanks sometime!"

"We'll talk about it when we're not being attacked by a demented teddy bear!" Marsy groans.

"Whatever."

We are now face to face. "Look, can you just throw the Greek fire?"

"Not until you say thank you!"

"Ugh! You're so frustrating! Hand it over! I'll throw it myself!"

"NO! Show some gratitude!"

Thia comes up and throws the Greek fire. It lands on the Care Bear. The Care Bear begins to smolder and melts and burns at the same time. Thia smirks at us. "Good. That made you two shut UP!" she screeches.

"I think there's something you're not telling us," I say plainly to Marsy.


	3. Mar Smells Like a Yankee

**Our two heroes and an idiot are back after that amazing chapter to hear the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth! Heehee!**

Mar Smells Like a Yankee

"I am telling you the absolute and completely actual truth," says Mar.

"We all know you can't hide this anymore, Marsy!" shouts Lanty. "We deserve to know exactly what just happened back there with Big Sammy, you've been freaking out ever since you met us, we have both suddenly gotten the ability to kick soup cans after performing back flips, you say creepy things like 'By Zeus' and know that ghost back there's name. What was it: Si...Sissy-Oh, WHATEVER! And now you refuse to give us ANY reasons why our world is falling apart!" She screams her head off at Mar, while he just stands there, staring off into the distance. God, I know I'm kind of lovestruck, I'm getting pretty irritated with this guy right now.

Mar suddenly comes back into the world. "All shall be explained soon. First we must find somewhere safer to tell you of..." He trails off as some freak heads towards us. He's wearing the Wal-mart vest and has a pin that says "Hello, my name is..." where someone has scribbled Jeffrey.

"Hello . . . Jeffrey." I say, hesitantly."Do you need anything from us, sir?"

"Thia, I'm pretty sure HE is supposed to ask us that." She rolls her eyes at me, then turns to Jeffrey. "So, Jeffrey, what do you want?"

The guy stares at us, then his eyes move to the giant pile of products next to us."First of all, it's King Maltadoris the 17th. And second, I think you three have a WHOLE lot of explaining to do." He looks at us scornfully.

"Whatever, Jeff. We don't need to explain ANYTHING. You're not my mother, last I checked," Lanty spoke defiantly.

The guy just looked like he was about to cry. Suddenly he was shouting and the next thing we knew, we were being ushered out of Wal-mart by two huge guys in black uniforms. Wait, since when does Wal-mart have security?

I guess Atalanta wasn't done yelling her head off because as soon as we got about 100 meters away she commenced her outburst.

"Jeez! We just got attacked by a ghost then we were kicked out of Wal-mart. Nice. And I am pretty sure you're just going to think we are going to go along with our lives and never ask about this again. Well YOU'RE WRONG! I mean seriously, you have a LOT of explaining to do! And don't just act like nothing ever happened. WE NEED TO KNOW THESE THINGS! And what about that...vision I saw there? What does that mean? Who _are_ we? Just tell us, MEATHEAD!" Lanty rambled on and on about Wal-mart and Big Sammy and Care Bears.

Mar retorted, "You don't understand! Your life could be at stake here! And now you're yelling at ME? Maybe I should just leave you two here to fend for yourselves against monsters!" He points a finger at the faraway Wal-mart. "What happened in there could happen ANYWHERE. There are things everywhere out to kill you! Without me, you'd be dead by now! You are just so conceited and self-centered, you can't see anyone but yourself here! I'm going to tell you everything, but like I was saying, this isn't safe! We need to get somewhere secure, and fast. Who knows what else is out there?"

He eyed every person who passed by suspiciously. He even scrutinized a baby like it would suddenly cackle and it's head would turn 360 degrees. Lanty burst again, spewing out with insults and questions. Mar rebutted everything she'd say, and infuriated, she'd shout more, starting the cycle again. I finally decided to intervene.

"OH! MY! GOD!!! Just SHUT UP ALREADY!" They both paused, staring at me."Lanty, just let him talk. I think we can figure out someplace where it's...safe...for him to tell us what the heck is going on." I glance over at Mar. "You will tell us, won't you?"

He stares at me for a moment, then comes out of it, dazed. "Yeah, I guess. Well, monsters don't follow you into restaurants. They DESPISE them. So I guess I could take you two out to eat. So...where do you want to go?" He looks at Lanty, who is giving him the death stare, sighs, then looks at me, waiting.

I realize he's asking me."Oh, um, uh . . . Chik-fil-a sound good to you, Lanty?" I turn to see her still emitting her death stare, unresponsive. I look back at Mar. "Uh, Chik-fil-a, I guess, if that's okay with you." I mutter shyly.

He looks at me once more, then gives Lanty a final glance before staring off into open space again. "Okay, then. I suppose we should take a taxi since none of us can drive yet."

We all then gaze out onto the road simultaneously. I note one yellow cab, and soon shout. It cruises over to the curb slowly, and the window rolls down to reveal an old man, about 78. "Where do ye Yankees wanta go to?" He asks in a deep Southern accent.

"We're not Yankees. We're from here," Lanty retorts.

"He's eh Yankee," the taxi driver says, pointing to Mar.

I am taken aback. "How do you know?" I ask.

"Cause he smails lak a Yankee," the taxi driver states plainly. "Wail, where do ye wanna go?"

"The nearest Chik-fil-a," says Mar. "The sooner, the better." We all climb into the tiny car. A few minutes later, we pull up to a small building with a giant inflatable cow in front of it, smiling creepily. The old guy demands his payment. Mar hands him a few $10 bills and the old man looks at him, gratefully grinning. He then drove off.

"Well, that was odd!" Lanty says after a moment of realizing where we are. "I swear that old guy was checking you out!" She leads the way into the restaurant and we follow her. We march up to the counter.

A girl of about 16 is standing in front of the cash register. She ignores Lanty until she realizes Lanty is staring at her. Annoyed, she looks up. "What?"

"Oh, I just wanted to see how long it took for you to stop looking at your nails and realize I was staring at you." Lanty glances over at Mar and me. "I'm going to go find a suitable location for us to remain for the next hour or so." She smirks at the girl, who is extremely agitated at this point. "Bye, Mandy. Can I call you Mandy? It suits you."

"My name's Olivia!"

Satisfied, Lanty dashes off. "See you, Mandy!" I can't resist letting out a giggle.

Mar comes up and orders some sandwiches and three lemonades. We bring the tray to the spot Lanty has picked out for us. We each take a few bites of our sandwiches tentatively. Then Lanty and I look at Mar expectantly, waiting for him to tell us about everything.

Mar looks at us both and then speaks, "Are you absolutely sure you want to know?"

"Positive," we say in unison.

"Whoa, is that one of those freaky twin things?" Mar asks.

"Um," I begin

Lanty stood up and moved to sit next to Mar. She pinched his ear and twisted it. "Okay, SPEAK!"

"All right . . . then . . . well, you know about Greek mythology and stuff, right?"

"Yes!" I yell out, then mumble, "well, ya know, if you like it . . ." I stop, feeling like an idiot. Second time that's happened today! Lanty sniggers at me.

Mar laughs. "Do I like Greek mythology? I live it. Anyways, the Greek gods . . . aren't myths. They are real, and they still exist."

"Wait, what?" I say nonplussed.

"You said, anyways," Lanty points out. "Anyways isn't actually a word. It's 'anyway'."

"You mean you're focusing on THAT out of the entire thing I just said?!?" Mar exclaims.

"Well, it's important!"

"Yeah, but not as important as the rest of the stuff he just said!" I screech. "Mar, why are you lying to us? Are you trying to play a prank? You're probably going to go tell everyone in the school and laugh at us for being so gullible. We're not going to fall for it."

"He's not lying, Thia." Mar stares at Lanty. I look at her, too. "He's telling the absolute truth. When do we go to New York?"

"New York?" Mar asks. Great job, Lanty! Bewilder him and make sure he's guilty of his stupid prank!"

"Of course," Lanty shrugs. "I saw it in the vision."

"Vision?" Mar and I ask at the same time.

Lanty gulps. "Um, yeah, I'll tell you later. It's a dream I had a few years ago. Sorry, it's irrelevant."

"Oh."

"Well, what else did you want to tell us?" I ask.

"You're a demigod," Lanty says plainly.

"Yes, but . . ." Mar gasps. "How do you possibly know all of this?"

"I see it. In dreams. You're a demigod. Son of . . . Zeus, Poseidon, or . . Hermes."

"Son of Poseidon, actually. How do you know all of this? Honestly, tell me."

"My stories. I can write and it sometimes ends up something like this. I remember now! Mars, my character. He was a son of Poseidon!"

"Okay. Now, can you guess who you are?"

"Daughters of some female goddess. Demeter or Athena!"

"Athena, I would say. We can't know for sure until you're claimed. But it's likely to be Athena."

"Okay," I say slowly. "Mar, we're going to go call some nice men and see if they can take you to a nice, comfy padded room."

"I'm not insane," Mars glares. "I'm telling the honest truth. But, yes, you will need to not tell a soul. And we may or may not go to New York."

"But I've always wanted to go to New York," Lanty whines. Mar groans and punches her in the shoulder.

"Mar are you feeling all right?"

"Thia, you're going to have to believe me about this. I am really telling the actual truth! Honest!"

Lanty looks over at me. "Thia, I know we sound insane, but do you really think I'd agree with Pretty Boy here if I didn't 100% believe him? And you should have said, 'honestly' because you needed an adverb instead of an adjective." Mar gives Lanty a look. "What?" she says, looking innocent.

I try to find some fault in what they claim as reality, but they answer every question I ask. I finally capitulate. Lanty seems content now that I have surrendered.

"So . . . what do demigods do?" I ask Mar. "Like, what are YOU doing here?"

"I was sent out in search of new demigods. And then I found you two. I guess you're safe . . . for now."

"Oh right. We should be getting home now. Bye, Marsy!" shouts Lanty, already halfway out the door.

I barely manage to say, "See you tomorrow, Mar," before she pulls me outside.

"Why didn't you believe him?" Lanty asks, slightly harshly.

I roll my eyes. "Yeah, I'm gonna believe some guy who tells us we're half Greek god. That's completely believable."

"Well, it actually is."

"Are you kidding me? The guy's raving mad."

"Maybe. Maybe not. He could just be misunderstood. Isn't it just amazing? Greek myths are real! It's fantastic, phenomenal, wondrous, amazing, almost unbelievable!"

"No, it IS unbelievable!" I argue. Lanty sticks her tongue out at me.

"You're such a downer, Thia," she giggles, racing ahead. That girl is like a bundle of energy.

We arrive home at last. It feels so weird, that all of this happened in only one day. We walk into our home, exhausted and somewhat confused. At least, I am.

Our stepmom is cooking dinner. Lucas is sitting in the center of the kitchen, on the floor, with a one of our old Barbies.

"That kid worries me," Lanty whispers in my ear.

Our stepmother greets us, immediately. "Hi, Lanty. Hi, Thia. Where's the soup?"


	4. Thia Throws Textbooks

Thia Throws Textbooks

Lanty and I climb into the old, putrid school bus. One of the sixth graders shouts excitedly, "Look! Big Sammy is gone!" The others quickly begin to acknowledge his absence. Suddenly the whole bus begins to cheer happily. I hear that there are about twelve parties taking place tonight. Imagine what would happen if we told them that we murdered him.

A few blocks later, Mar enters the bus. He sits on the seat in front of us. "Hello. Did either of you study for the history test we're having today?" he casually says.

"What?!? There's a history test today?!?" Lanty freaks.

"Um, yes," Mar says quietly.

Lanty shrugs. "It's not like I would have studied anyway. Did you study?"

"Yeah. I stink at taking tests!"

"It's just a review on what we did last year with Ms. Stockwell."

"I know that, but I wasn't here last year. DUH!" Mar groans. Lanty, shut up!

Apparently my sister doesn't receive telepathic messages. She probably pressed the "ignore" button. "Shouldn't you know about history anyway? We don't even get a grade! You could answer everything wrong and still get an A! And it's a VERBAL test! Barely anybody fails verbal tests!"

"Well, maybe I'm not as smart as you!" Mar shouts back.

"Or maybe you're just stupid?" Mar makes a face at Lanty's comment. Why can't those two just SHUT UP! "Even Thia will pass this test! It's verbal."

"Oh, yes, of course. The verbal would help because it doesn't cause problems with dyslexia."

"Wait, you said something about our ADHD and dyslexia yesterday," I say. "What does that have to do with any of this?"

"Demigods always have dyslexia and ADHD. Dyslexia because our minds are arranged to read ancient Greek. ADHD because your reflexes are trained for battle. Actually, come to think of it, I've never heard of twin demigods before . . ."

"That's awesome! And, just asking, where do you live? Since you don't seem to live anywhere . . ." Nice, Thia. Go ahead and sound like a major stalker and ask him where he lives. There's nothing strange about that at ALL!

"Are you a hobo?" Lanty asks excitedly. "Do you live in a garbage can down the street or something? Or in a TREE?!? You could be the Great Tree Hobo or something like that. You should totally let us come over sometime. I want to see you tree! That would be AWESOME! Can I please come over, ?"

"No! I'm not a hobo, Spaz! I live with my half-sister, Leila, downtown. Normally, I don't live here, but I'm on a special mission right now. She said that I could stay with her for the school year."

"What is your special mission? Are you a spy sent here to find a bomb that, if set off, could destroy the world and we only have thirty-one days to find the bomb, disable it, and annihilate the villains? Can I help? I've always wanted to be a top-secret-agent spy! My code name could be Black Tiger. Or I could be a NINJA!"

"No, my secret mission is to find new demigods," Mar chuckles.

I ask Mar, "How did you know there were demigods here?"

"I really don't know. Mr. Brunner has basically sent out demigods and satyrs to tour the country in search of half-bloods. You are the first ones I've found so far."

"How can you tell us apart? Most people can't. Not that they care anyway," Lanty shrugs.

Mar glances back and forth between us. "You are always very hyper, Spaz, and you are VERY argumentative."

"Not true!"

Mar rolls his eyes. "My point exactly. And you despise me."

"I don't despise you!" Lanty shouts. "I JUST HATE YOUR GUTS!"

Mar's eyebrows furrow. "Thia is much calmer and patient, and she doesn't mind my presence." He looks over at me and smiles. I start giggling uncontrollably.

Lanty pretends to gag. "Well, we'd love to stay and talk about how you like Thia over me, but we need to get to class. Bye, Pretty Boy!" She runs out of the bus, pulling me along.

"What do we have first period, Lanty?" I ask her as I open my locker. An avalanche of books falls out.

Lanty smirks at me. "We have history. Thia, you REALLY need to get organized! Look at my locker! I even have a shrine to Elmo."

"Why do you have a shrine to Elmo?"

"Because Elmo has very few shrines, and he is one of the greatnesses of our country! Right behind Michael Jackson and right ahead of George Washington." I lift an eyebrow at her incredulously. My sister can be insane sometimes. "Come on! We don't want Mrs. Paul to be crabby because we're late!" We hurry off into her room.

I slip into my seat next to Mar before the history teacher could notice. She was too busy worshipping her picture of Obama, anyway. Yeah, Mrs. Paul is weird.

"Now, class, today we will have a verbal test. I will call on students at random, so be on your toes!" She surveys the class for a satisfactory victim. "Susan! What's the significance of Harpers Ferry?"

Susan struggles for an answer. "Um, uh, a guy told lots of guys to go free a lot of guys but the guy couldn't free the guys or something?"

INCORRECT! Does someone else think they know the right answer?" She looks around the room some more. Lanty raises her hand. "Atalanta?"

Lanty clears her throat. "It's Lanty. On October 16, 1859, the abolitionist, John Brown, led a group of twenty-one men in a raid on the federal arsenal. But the raid was unsuccessful and every person who participated in the raid ended up dead," Lanty smoothly replies.

Mrs. Paul has a smug look on her face. "That is correct, Lanty. Let's see . . . Rore! What is the full name of the current president of the United States?"

Rore answers the question after what seems to be forever. "Barack Hussain Obama! Whoa, Mrs. Paul, that question was super super CEREAL!" he exclaims.

Mar snorts. "A two-year-old could have answered that!"

"Correct, Rore," Mrs. Paul scrutinizes him. "Hm . . . Thia! Who wrote the Odyssey?"

What did she just say? "Um, excuse me, ma'am, did you just ask who the author of the Odyssey was?"

"Yes. You need to listen more, Ilythia Calliope Clark. Your parentage isn't going to help you here."

Whoa, did she just call me by my full name? And how does she know about my parentage? No teacher knows that! "Mrs. Paul, I don't know the answer to that, and why are you asking me a mythology question in U.S. history class?"

"I expect _you_ to know, Ilythia," she sneered. Again with the full name! Mar looks at me, an expression of horror on his face. He's staring at me as if he knows something is about to happen. Wait, hasn't this happened before?

As I scramble for a memory, Mrs. Paul's neck begins to extend and grow. At the same time, eight more heads seem to pop out of her shoulders. She has morphed into some snake with nine heads! Could this week get any creepier? She growls at Mar. "Foolish half-bloods! I have come to end you all! Master will be most pleased!" Wait a second . . . MASTER? Someone . . . or something . . . is sending all of these creepy things to kill us?!? Wow, aren't we lucky!

Mar leaps on top of his deck and pulls something out of his pocket. He yells, "Είναι ηττημένο, είναι κακό!" The thing expands into a scepter. I somehow understand that he says, "Be vanquished, evil being!" Mar throws the scepter like a spear at Mrs. Paul.

She dodges the scepter and cackles evilly, "It'll take MUCH more than a silly scepter to destroy ME, Marsyas Achilles Wilkes!" She snakes around the room to a bookcase, and then to a closet. Mar runs over to her with the scepter in his hand. Wait, how'd he get it back? He just threw it! I follow him cautiously.

Mrs. Paul disappears behind her desk. Mar and I inch forward ever so slowly. Suddenly she jumps out and lands behind us, startling me. She tail-slaps Mar out of the way, and her eighteen eyes focus on me. "Prepare to die, Ilythia Calliope Clark!" she rasps. She corners me and I have no escape. I close my eyes and wait for the end. Apparently my end never comes. I open my eyes the slightest bit and catch a glimpse of Mar standing next to me, fighting off Mrs. Paul. How he got there, I have no idea.

I look around for a weapon and catch sight of a history textbook. I can just imagine Lanty saying "Hm, possibilities!" I throw it at Mrs. Paul, hoping it does SOMETHING to her. "How is _that _going to help?" Mar yells at me.

"Um," I mutter, not having a good answer. Lanty would probably start an argument if she was here. Wait, where IS Thia? The book slaps one of Mrs. Paul's head and HARD. It goes limp, and the other heads become distracted. I run over to Mar and say, "How do we kill it?"

Cut off its heads and burn the stumps. Simple."

"Easier said than done," Lanty's voice floats down from somewhere.

I think for a moment. "Got any more Greek fire?"

He looks at me. Then he replies, "Yeah. Why didn't I think of that stuff before?"

"Now, could you please get it ready before we DIE?!?"

"Okay, okay! Jeez. Chop off its heads first!"

"HOW DO I CHOP OFF ITS HEADS?!?!?!?" I yell.

"I don't know, Thia. Here, use my pocketknife!" He tosses the knife to me. Dang, how much room in his pocket does he have?

"But won't two heads just grow back in its place?" I dodge a green, scaly tail.

"Just distract it first. I'll get the fire going!"

I turn around and head to the bookcase, pick up about fourteen books, and let them fly. WHAM! It hits one in the head. WHAM! It hits another! WHAM! Four more down!

"It's ready!" Mar calls out.

"Come here! I'm going to start beheading Mrs. Paul!"I pull out Mar's pocketknife and chop off one head. There goes another. "Hurry up, Mar!" He bolts over next to me. He burns each stump as a I decapitate it. At the end, I feel there's something missing. I stab Mrs. Paul in the chest to get back at that detention she gave me yesterday. There! In your face!

Mrs. Paul screeches in pain, then explodes into a confetti cloud of dust. The students are silent, and just stare at us. They just saw us murder our history teacher. Suddenly, I remember. My dream! I have to tell Lanty! LANTY! I look around the room, panicked. "Where's Lanty?" I yell at Mar.

"She's fine! COME ON!" he shouts back at me. I hesitate, reluctant, while Mar hollers at me to follow him. Frustrated, he eventually yanks my arm and pulls me out of the classroom. "NO! LET GO OF ME, MAR! NOOO!" I scream, while I fight and kick in protest. He gets me out of the room.

"What are you thinking?" he hisses.

"Lanty!" I say in exasperation.

"We have to get out of here. I'll explain what our classmates probably just saw on the way," he growls. I look back in the window of the door. LANTY!

I see the dust cloud clearing, and two legs appear from the ceiling. They fall to the floor, and Lanty's face is seen. She grabs her bucket of popcorn. POPCORN?!?!?!?!? Lanty walks out of the door to join us. I swear, that kid is going to be some sort of evil mastermind when she grows up! How did she avoid that entire fight? Lanty opens the door and waves to us.

"Where were you?" Mar hisses.

"The ceiling. It's not as hard to get up there as you think. And you two seemed to have everything under control." Mar shoves him, and she shoves him back. They make faces at each other all the way out of the school.


	5. We Play with Mud

**Okay, so most people probably know that this is a joint story between me and dragonrider357. The last two chapters were written by Thia and this chapter is written by me. I'm sorry that I didn't tell you that my twin wrote the last two chapters and they were completely in her perspective. Unless you're mentally ill, you probably found out the perspective thing in the first ten seconds of reading or sooner.**

**Well, I know that most joint story authors have planned out authors' notes where they have a conversation or something, but we're not that smart. And, Ilythia is at a party that I wasn't invited to. I would give you a quote from Marsy, but he isn't answering his phone right now. So, I'm going to put in a random conversation about a project where we have a celebrity family tree that Thia and I had a while back. I'll try to remember a quote from Marsy.**

**Okay, so the conversation between Thia and I is that we had to choose for our celebrity family tree whether we wanted to have a spouse or some other relative besides aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, parents, and grandparents. She chose a husband, but I ended up having an extra cousin I think. So this was our conversation on chat.**

**Lanty (me): I'm not married, I wanted to have a great-grandmother.  
Thia (dragonrider357): wow. Guess who I was married to.  
Lanty: Yeah. It's Hannah Montana. That was bad timing! Taylor Lautner!**

**And that is a stupid mistake I once made. It was pretty funny. Now, for those stalker creeps who feel like knowing what my celebrity family tree was, here it is.**

**Grandfather: Elvis Presley  
Grandmother: Cleopatra  
Father: Abraham Lincoln  
Mother: Wicked Witch of the West/Elphaba  
Brother: Eragon  
Pet: Saphira  
Sister: Anne Frank  
Uncle: Voldemort  
Aunt: Mary Poppins  
Cousin: Taylor Swift  
Cousin: Percy Jackson  
Uncle: Darth Vader  
Cousin: Blackbeard/Edward Teach  
Cousin: Spongebob  
Me: Selena Gomez**

**And that is my dream family. My friend said that she couldn't be me in my family tree because she thinks Eragon is cute and she thinks Percy is cute, so she couldn't stand having a cute cousin and/or a cute brother. But I REALLY wanted a dragon! Don't judge me!**

**Okay, now for some quotes from Marsy. I don't email him much, so it's kind of hard. I have all of Thia's quotes saved somewhere. I'm not a stalker, I just archive my emails! So, hm, a quote from Marsy.**

**Lanty: If I fell off the mountain, would you catch me?  
Marsy: No, probably not.**

**Well, I think that definitely shows some emotion. Yep, Marsy and I hate each other in real life as much as we hate each other on fanfiction. And that is why Thia and I decided to put in some Marsyas/Ilythia romance instead of Marsyas/Atalanta romance. Except there was this really funny moment at school when Marsy and I were walking back to a class. We were both trying to stall for time, so we were walking really slowly. And then I stop and just drop my books intentionally. So, we're both cracking up. And then he tells me to drop this huge stack of papers, but the papers fall still in a semi-orderly pile. So, I grab them and just throw them all the way across the hallway. Nobody saw me because we were the only two out there. So, our story was that I dropped my papers and he helped me pick them up. Nobody ever found out!**

**So, Thia and I are undecided as to who Marsy should end up with. Should he be with Ilythia? Or Atalanta? Or some other random character? Ilysyas? Or Atalansyas? You decide!**

Marsy and I are arguing about who-know-what right now. We just have to argue; it's part of our job! Okay, so, neither of us is old enough to get a job that isn't part-time. It's probably some old family feud.

"So you were hanging out on the ceiling the whole time while Thia and I were fighting monsters?!?" Mar shouts at me. "Why didn't you . . . oh, I don't know . . . DECIDE TO HELP?!?!?"

"Hey, does Poseidon have any feuds with people or something?"

"Um, yeah, Athena, but that's completely beside the point."

"ATHENA!" I shout. "That's the one. Our mother, duh! It's obviously the reason that Marsy and I can't get along at ALL! So, where are we going? Does the great son of Poseidon, Marsyas Achilles Wilkes, have some almighty plan or something?"

"Uh . . ." Marsy deadpanned. His eyes suddenly brightened. "I'm taking you to Camp Half-Blood!"

"What's that?" Thia asks. Thia, this is no time for stupid questions!

"Oh, it's this camp where half-bloods go to train in fighting monsters and other cool demigod stuff. I was going to wait until the summer to take the two of you, but . . . it's too dangerous. Somehow, your scent is far too strong. It probably has something to do with you being twins. It most likely triples or quadruples your scent. We need to get you to Mr. Underwood and Mr. Brunner."

"Okay. So, what are we waiting around here for?" I ask impatiently. "Wait! You aren't really afraid of cell phones, are you?"

"Nah, they attract monsters. It's like a signal flare when a demigod uses a cell phone. I had my suspicions about the two of you. I'm sorry, but neither of you can use a cell phone except in the utmost of dangerous and urgent times."

"Whatever. I barely use mine anyway," I shrug my shoulders. "So, exactly where are we going again? Besides Camp Half-Blood, I mean. Because I'm pretty sure that there are no camps around here."

"No, Camp Half-Blood is in Long Island New York. Unfortunately, we can't take a plane. We could probably travel using a train. Unless you two feel like asking for a favor from your mom?"

"Why don't you ask Poseidon to give us a really cool tsunami wave that will carry us all the way to New York?" I suggested cockily.

"Because that would probably kill hundreds of people and we're nowhere near the coast."

"Don't use those lame excuses on US, Pretty Boy. But we can ask our mom. She's smart."

"Great. Let's just hope she feels like answering. Now, Leila is going to pick us up and drive us to your house and then to my house."

"Why doesn't Leila just drive us?" Thia asks stupidly.

"Because, she has a son and a husband that she can't leave to drive us all the way to New York. They don't exactly know about Poseidon and stuff. They think I'm her nephew."

"Oh, right," Thia mumbles. A black Suburban pulls up to the curb. Marsy smiles and opens the door. There is a woman in there. She has Marsy's eyes and his hair color. I immediately like her. I guess it's something about Poseidon's and Athena's complicated relationship. Some children of Poseidon I will like, and others I will despise. But seriously, a salt water spring?!? No offense to Poseidon, but the olive branch was WAAAY better! Athens is very famous now. I guess the horses would be a pretty good gift. That must have been a hard decision. But I guess they cooperated in that really large battle that took place about fifty years ago. Marsy told me about it. I wish I had been alive then! That would have been AWESOME!

"Okay, Atalanta, Ilythia," the woman says. "We're going to stop by your house first. Climb in." We follow her orders. "So, I'm Leila Mane, Mar's half-sister. On the paternal side, of course. Now, you're going to have to retrieve some stuff from your house. You can't tell anyone where you're going. It would be BEYOND insanity. Actually, probably anybody but your father would lock you up in a padded cell. Then, we'll go to my house and Mar will get some of his stuff. But you three will have to figure out some form of transportation for the rest of the trek."

"Got it," I say casually. "But, you know, Pretty Boy over there prefers to be called Marsy."

Leila's eyes get really big and she belts out in laughter. I smirk at Marsy who looks like he's contemplating who to kill first. "You're not bad. For a daughter of Athena," Leila laughs. "I have a feeling Hermes might have had something to do with your birth."

"What?!?" I say quickly.

Leila grins. "Oh, right. Well, there have been a few demigod twins. And for demigod twins to be born, two of the twelve major deities, besides the parent, must approve. I remember Dionysus's twins, Pollux and Castor. Pollux had some Ares in him and Castor had Apollo's help. You probably had Hermes's help and Thia probably had . . . Hephaestus's help. It's hard to tell because she's not that talkative." Leila glances at us from the rearview mirror. "A child of Athena with Hephaestus's help would be great at coming up with new ideas and then building something to help it. A child of Athena with Hermes's influence would be funny and have a way with words that can convince almost anybody."

"Okay. I think we're almost at our house. Just turn right up here, and we're the big green house on the left," Thia points out. Leila drives and pulls up at the house next to ours. "Um, this isn't our driveway," Thia points out again.

"I can't raise suspicion and park at your actual driveway! Nobody can know that you aren't at school or that you're leaving. Trust me. Now, you have to sneak in, pack some stuff, and get out in approximately ten minutes."

"Got it," I confirm authoritatively. "We'll go. Marsy, come help us." Leila snickers again and I grab Marsy's arm. Thia would grab his hand, but I'm NOT going to touch THAT. Thia climbs out of the car ahead of me and I yank Marsy behind. He doesn't protest, but doesn't thank me. Ungrateful brat! Can you call a guy a brat? I guess it's better than diva. Or drama queen. Oh my gosh, I could totally see Marsy in a princess dress at a tea party or something! THAT WOULD BE AWESOME! And demeaning. Hehehehehehe. Sorry, it's that ADHD thing I told you about. Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. That is sooooo much fun to say! Better than dyslexic.

"How are we going to get past Laura?" Thia asks.

"Do either of you have any ketchup?" I ask innocently.

"Um, no, not exactly."

"Well, that makes this harder. Don't you two carry ketchup around in your pockets or something? You know, those tiny little packets. A big bottle would be better but, I guess we'll have to make do. Okay, Thia, I have to sneak into the house and get the ketchup bottle. Marsy, take Thia to the back of the house and scare Lucas somehow. I don't care what you do, just make sure that he's screaming, but he has to stay near the back of the house. Preferably upstairs."

"Got it, chief," Marsy mocks. I kick him in the shins (for good measure) and send them on their way. I hope they don't get caught up in their flirting and end up forgetting the plan. Maybe I can trust Pretty Boy to keep Thia on track. I see Laura run through the house shouting. I sneak in the front door which was conveniently unlocked. Laura should really become more paranoid. That didn't sound normal. I spy-walk over to the fridge and grab the ketchup from it. I sprint back out the door. Marsy and Thia are outside of the house.

"Okay, we need Leila's help for this next part. It's very tricky and we have to get it just right," I whisper to them. We walk back to the car. "Leila, how good of an actress are you?" I ask mischievously.

"Should I be worried?" Leila whispers to Thia. Thia nods slowly. "Okay. I guess I'm a pretty good actress. What do you need me to do?"

Leila climbed out of the car. I have her turn in a slow circle as I inspect her. She'll do. "Marsy, Thia, go find a nearby mud puddle. And a large one," I command. They run off in different directions. Two minutes later, Thia comes back with news of a HUGE mud pit just down the road a bit. I lead Leila to there. Marsy joins us. "Are you ready Leila?" I ask. She nods. I grab the ketchup bottle and some mud. "Lay down on the ground," I command.

"Okay," she says cautiously. I gesture to the ground next to me and she lays down.

"Marsy, Thia, help me spread mud all over her," I order. "But not like a mud monster. Make her look like she fell and got really bruised up and muddy." We slather mud on Leila. Some of it goes on her legs, some on her arms, and some on her face. When she looks believable, I begin to squirt the ketchup on her. We mix it in with some more mud, and soon she looks like a bloody, injured person. "Excellent," I mutter, quite evilly. The others spare a worried glance at me before looking in horror at each other. "Now, Leila, you have to pretend to be seriously hurt. Talk a lot so that she doesn't hear us. Thia, Marsy, and I are going to sneak in the back door and get the stuff. After we're finished, Marsy will come in with some story about you being his mom and your dad being there to take you home or to the hospital. Make sure she doesn't clean your wounds or anything. We have to keep this plot a complete secret, got it?" I ask. They all nod. "One, two, three, DEMIGODS!" I say, as a signal to break.

They rush off. I catch up with Thia and Marsy before we see Leila knock on the front door. She is slouched over and looks horrible. My plan is BRILLIANT! We are now at the back door. I am sooooo glad that Dad decided to have a house with a back door. It is so helpful with these evil schemes. We listen to the front door open and close. Time to move in.

"Let's go!" Marsy whispers to us. We creep into the house, making sure that the door doesn't slam shut. Marsy, Thia, and I walk upstairs to our rooms. Well, mine and Thia's room, not Marsy's, because, well, he doesn't have a room here. Thia and I share a room because our house isn't huge and Lucas hates both of us. We have a shared closet and a shared bathroom.

"Thia, I'll collect clothes in here," I whisper to her. "Will you go to the bathroom and get shampoo, toothbrushes, toothpaste, hairbrushes, and anything else we might need?" Thia nods and scurries off. "Marsy, help me pick out some casual clothes for Thia and I." Marsy walks into our closet and I open the T-shirt and shorts drawer. We begin to riffle through the drawers, pulling out random T-shirts and shorts and placing them on the ground beside us. Then, I stand up and grab pairs of jeans off the hangers. "Marsy, you go back into the room, I think I can get the rest," I say, dismissing him. He translates the hidden message of "I have to get some 'girl clothes' and you can't be in here or that would be very embarrassing". Marsy nods and walks out of the closet. He lounges on one of the beds. "Get off of my bed!" I reprimand. He makes a face and stands up, immediately moving to Thia's bed. I grab the "girl clothing" and stuff it in two separate backpacks. I put all of our other clothing in the backpacks, too. I sling one over my shoulder and toss the other bag onto the bed. Thia finally comes back with the toiletries. We put them in the bags and then creep out the back door again.

"Watch out for the creaky steps," Thia warns Marsy. He nods again and we slowly walk down the stairs. Suddenly, one of the floors creak that I step on. We cease walking.

"What was that?" Laura asks from farther away.

We hear Leila's voice. "Oh, it was probably your son or something."

"How do you know I have a son?" Laura accuses. "I never told you that."

"Um, uh, I can see some toys from here and they look like a young boy's toys," Leila stutters. I guess Laura bought it because we didn't hear from her again. Each one of us sighs softly in relief. We spy-walk back to the outside of the house. We all run back to the Suburban and pant from holding our breaths.

"That was WAY too close," Marsy says. Thia and I nod in agreement. "If stupid Lanty hadn't stepped on the freaking board, we wouldn't have almost be caught!" he exclaims.

"Don't you DARE call me stupid. Just because I'm not a genius doesn't mean that you can insult me. Besides, I'm probably a daughter of Athena, so you can't call me stupid. And finally, the creaky step made it all the more interesting and very much more similar to an actual spy movie. That was the chance of a life time! Now, Pretty Boy, you have to go get your 'mommy'," I rebut.

Marsy rolls his eyes and they settle in a glare at me. He storms up to the house before putting on his smile and knocking. My sister finally remember that we need to hide in case Laura looks toward the Suburban. We duck behind the car. Marsy is greeted and allowed to enter the house. A few minutes later, he comes out, leading Leila. They walk to the Suburban and climb in. We follow suit. "Wow, that was exhilarating!" Leila gasps. "I thought she almost had us when that step creaked. That was the most fun I've had in YEARS!" I smirk at Marsy. He groans. "So, did you guys get everything?"

"Yes," Thia answers. "At least, I did. I don't know about Lanty and Mar."

"MARSY and I got everything," I grinned. "Isn't that right, Pretty Boy?" Leila laughs almost uncontrollably at this before starting up the car.

"Lanty, I can tell we're going to be great friends," she chuckles. "I've been trying to think of nicknames for my little half-brother for years and you've nailed him with two in two days."

"I'm just that cool. I'm trying to think of more. Maybe Fish Head. Or Mermaid Man! Like from Spongebob!"

"I love Spongebob!" Marsy exclaims. "Do you remember that episode with the talking bubble?"

"Oh, yeah, that one was great!" I sigh happily. Maybe Marsy will be tolerable. Oh, who am I kidding? "So, Leila, I guess we're going to your house now. Are you guys going to tell us any more about our situation than what we already know? I REALLY want to know what's going to happen!"

"Um, we'll tell you some more as soon as we get to my house. Marsy can pack up all of his things and then you'll have to find a way to Camp Half-Blood. Does that agree with you?"

"Very much, yes, thank you." We ride all the way to Leila's and Marsy's house. Leila stops our black form of transportation and we all climb out.

"Marsy, go up to your room," Leila instructs. "Pack for your trip." Marsy disappears. "I'm going to inform you a little bit more about Camp Half-Blood," Leila says, turning to Thia and I.

"Um, I kind of want it to be a surprise for me, so I'm going to go . . . . help Marsy!" Thia says. She rushes off.

"Does Thia like my brother?" Leila asks suspiciously. I nod. "Okay, then. I won't tell him, he can figure it out for himself. Camp Half-Blood is a camp where demigods are trained. You learn to fight, ride horses, canoe, make weapons, and weave baskets and such. It's also protected by magical borders so that monsters can't get in. Basically, it's the safest place on Earth, at the height of its power. There are two people who run the camp. They are Mr. Brunner, or Chiron, and Mr. Underwood, but everybody calls him Grover. Ask them to tell you about their adventures sometime. It's really something. Now, the people are a lot like their godly parent. Hephaestus's cabin has a lot of people that are good at making weapons. The Hermes campers are pranksters and can steal, so watch your stuff around them. The Demeter cabin is usually just a bunch of plant-growing people, but they make most of the strawberries which is what Chiron uses to fund the camp. The Apollo cabin has some good archers and charioteers. All the people in Zeus's cabin make vicious enemies, so stay on their good side. The Poseidon cabin usually has a lot of canoers. Hades's children are all suspicious and untrusting. I'd be amazed if you are good friends with a camper from there. All the people in the Aphrodite cabin are snobby and conceited. The Ares cabin has all of the bullies. So, that's basically all you need to know that you won't figure out on your own quickly. The rest you have to learn from experience."

"Okay, thanks, Leila. I thought Marsy and Thia should be down by now."

"Why don't you go check on them?" Leila asks. "You might have to interrupt a heated make-out session." She winks and I grin. I race up the stairs to find Marsy and Thia looking ready to strangle each other.

"Hey, guys, what's going on?" I ask quietly.

Thia groans. "Mar called me a sissy," she whines. I whack Marsy in the head.

"Well, Thia said that I was an idiot and that my head was filled with salt water."

"Mar said that I couldn't beat a minnow in a fight."

"Thia said that I am dumb!" Marsy whines.

"Ugh, SHUT UP! Both of you! You're whining a lot! It really annoys me. Look, Thia, just go downstairs and I'll beat up Fish Head here. Marsy, you will stay up here as I talk to you. Now, Thia, you're being an idiot! Why did you insult him in the first place?"

"I don't know. But I'm sure he started it."

"Are you two years old?!?"

"No."

"Well, you're acting like it. Go downstairs and I'll beat up Pretty Boy!" Thia races off. I turn back to Marsy. "I have to tell you something," I say urgently.

"What?" he asks.

"I had a vision. The other day, when we were fighting Sisyphus. I saw my birth. Thia and I were originally a very long scroll. Explain this to me, Marsyas. I'm confused."

"You're a daughter of Athena, then," he says finally.

"I knew that. Tell me more."

"Children of Athena are children of thoughts. They come from what Athena writes, but they have to be 'helped' by a male. She obviously wrote too much about you and Thia and you became very similar twins. I don't know what's going to happen, but we have to get you to Camp Half-Blood as quickly as possible."

"I think we already established that, Fish Head! Now, let's go. We obviously have some urgent mission!"

Marsy smirks. "You remind me of stories I've heard about your half-sister. She actually had arguments with my half-brother, just like you."

"Did they end up killing each other?"

"No, they're actually married now."

"Oh, wow, I wonder what happened there."

"Basically, the almost destruction of the Earth brought them together."

"The Earth was never almost destroyed!"

"Yes it was. You'll find out more sooner." I nod and we walk back downstairs. This has been a LONG week!


	6. We Steal Mopeds

We Steal Mopeds

Marsy, Thia, and I are trying to brainstorm some way to get all the way to New York from Spartanburg, South Carolina. This was going to be rather difficult. We look around the street to try to think about something. "Why can't we just go on an airplane?" Thia asks.

"There's a huge feud between Poseidon and Zeus most of the time. I would be shot down quickly. You two could go since Athena was Zeus's favorite daughter. But I could never ride on an airplane."

"Oh, right," Thia sighs. "What if we just find a way to get to the sea and you can figure out the rest?"

Marsy looks at her before glancing around. "That might work. But we need a way to get to the coast." I frown in thought for a few minutes. We could steal a car, but we would probably get pulled over for stealing and for driving without a license. There are a few trains, but that's the boring way out of everything.

"HEY! I've got an idea!" I shouted enthusiastically.

"What?!?!?" they both asked at the same time. I point across the street to three vehicles sitting there casually.

"A moped? Really, Lanty?!?" Marsy snorts. I throw the nearest pinecone at him.

"Lanty, that's stealing," Thia whines.

"Uh, yeah, I don't think that the laws apply here. We just murdered our history teacher and destroyed half of Wal-mart!" I point out. Thia ponders the question and then nods slowly.

"I guess we can break the law just this once."

We cross the streets and each grab the handlebars of one of the mopeds. We wheel them out into the street. "Have either of you every actually ridden a moped?" Marsy asks.

"No, but it adds to the adventure," I grin, smirking at him. He sticks out his tongue. "Just go with it. You seem like the adventurous type."

"I am, but breaking the law AND riding a vehicle that NONE of us have experience on seems like a bad way to try to accomplish something."

"Yes, but it's a moped. It's not like we're have to turn into leather-wearing, lean, mean biker gangsters. Because you would fail at that job."

"Hey, I'm tough!"

"Yeah, to a bunny!"

"Guys, stop fighting!" Thia interrupts. I glare at Marsy before spinning on my heel and stomping off. After about ten yards, I trudge back.

"I forgot that the moped is over here," I grin sheepishly. Marsy smirks. Ugh, I hope that guy falls down a well all the way to Tartarus some day! At least I know that there is a Tartarus now. It really helps with death threats. "Go to TARTARUS!" I shout out loud, voicing my thoughts. Yeah, I forgot that nobody here can read thoughts. FREAKOS!

"Okay, I'll follow you down there," Marsy smirks. I kick him in the shins.

"Now that we've settled that," I smirk back, "let's ride."

I climb onto my moped and stare at it for a few seconds. Marsy does the same. Thia gets on and immediately begins to press buttons and push levers. Her moped roars to life. Then, she shows us how to turn on the things. I guess Marsy and I are both technologically challenged, as I like to call it. It's a horrible epidemic. Please call 1-800-NOT-REAL to help. Thank you for your kindness. Soon, we're cruising down the road at about thirty-five miles per hour. Leila had let us borrow some helmets so that we could be safe. But safety is for squares. Either way, it's illegal to not have helmet while riding a moped, so I decided not to draw any more attention to myself by breaking any more laws. I'm not really the police's favorite person right now. I got kicked out of Wal-mart. That is the place that people make lists just about stupid things to do to tick off the employees! Whatever.

We cruise through the roads for a long time. We pass many cow farms and goat farms and horse farms. We aren't really near the plantation section of South Carolina yet. We try to skirt around towns so as not to be recognized. It's a very effective way of traveling. Suddenly, Marsy jumps off the bicycle, runs out up to a fence and slices the top off a sunflower. We glance at him.

"What did you do that for?!?" I ask. "Are you afraid of flowers?!?"

"No, but the flower was moving suspiciously and of its own accord!" Marsy gasps. I raise my eyebrows.

"You mean the wind blew it?" I ask incredulously. He sighs and nods.

"Sorry. As a demigod, you become paranoid. That flower could have been controlled by Demeter and she was coming to attack me."

"Why would Demeter attack you?" I laugh.

"Well, let's just say that after what happened to Persephone, Demeter doesn't like it when you hit on one of her daughters."

"YOU HIT ON ONE OF DEMETER'S DAUGHTERS?!?!?!?!?!?" I gasp, cracking up laughing now. All three mopeds are stopped.

Marsy nods and gets a semi-glazed look. "Yeah. Her name's Caroline Ott and she is FINE! Blonde hair, brown eyes. Wow."

"Earth to Captain Dorkwad," I shout in his ear. "Come back from Planet Goo-goo Love. We need you and your flower-stabbing awesomeness to get us to Camp Half-Blood!" Marsy shakes his head.

"Oh, I don't like Caroline that way anymore. I moved on to Kate Barry. Brown hair, brown eyes, daughter of Calliope. There's just no beating her."

"WEIRDO!" Thia and I say simultaneously, looking at each other. We laugh as Marsy glares at us. "So, Marsy, enlighten us. Who's who in Camp Half-Blood?" I say putting my hand against my cheek, faking intrigue. Marsy rolls his eyes but begins to tell us. We basically had stopped for our first stop. That was fairly good considering we had been riding for two hours and had made it seventy miles. I wonder what was going to happen once we were out of gas.

"Well, assuming you're daughters of Athena, you're cabin will have about ten other people in it. The girls closest to your age are Diana Thompson, Clara Eaton, and Skipper Plann. You probably will get along well with Clara and Skipper. Rule number one of Camp Half-Blood: You can date anyone of the opposite gender from other cabins, but not guys from your own cabin. That would be weird, because they're your half-siblings. Nobody else is off-limits. To explain, the guys that one of you will probably end up dating at some point in time are Reed Scott, Talamon DuPree, Ajax Naples, and/or Hero Michaelson. They're some of the most popular guys at camp, especially with the girls. Now, we have to make a stop, soon. They're this great shop that I HAVE to show you. It's perfect for our needs!"

"Whatever you say," I sigh. Marsy is such an idiot! He thinks that everything he comes up with is the best! What a loser! I guess we just have to follow him. His plans aren't the best. We would be dead if I hadn't helped with the whole care bear thing at Wal-mart! Okay, maybe Thia was the most important part of that, but still, I did help!

"Guys, stop being idiots!" Thia says.

"Shut up!" I shoot back.

"We need to be quiet! I have to look for the turn to this place or else I'll miss it!" Marsy shouts. "It's only about five miles from here. And everything is practically free to people like us."

"People like us?" Thia asks.

"Are you trying to insult us, Fish Head?"

"No, I mean demigods! It's a shop for demigods. You'll see when we get there." We ride around for about five more minutes before Marsy makes us turn onto some dirt road and then, four minutes later, we ware in front of this awesomely insane building! It has the classical Greek columns, but when I get closer, I see that the columns are all statues of different gods. You can tell which god/goddess they are because of the symbols around them. Marsy leads us past the monstrous beings and into the store. Inside is a wonderland. There are these areas that only have open space and the store is HUGE! I look around and apparently, those open areas are training ranges. There is one for archery and one for dueling and so many others. Marsy leads us into the rather odd building. A dark figure can be seen from far away.

"Hey, Briares," Marsy calls. The figure turns and lumbers towards us. When it comes closer, I see that the creature is fifteen feet tall with one hundred arms and fifty heads. At least I'm guessing, because I remember hearing something about people like that in mythology, but I didn't have time to count the arms and head.

"Hello, Marsyas. It's good to see you. And you have two girls here." Some of the heads turn to look at us. "What are your names?" they ask. It's really creepy to get talked to by twenty-something different heads.

"I'm Ilythia Calliope Clark and this is my sister, Atalanta Thalia Clark."

"It's nice to meet you, Ilythia and Atalanta," the heads say.

"Do you have to feed ALL of your heads or do you only need to feed just one of them?!? And why do you have a store out here?!?"

Briares turns to me with most of his heads. The other four are making faces at Marsy. I like this guy! "I only have to feed half of my heads. And my arms help with putting things on shelves while my heads help with keeping track of shady customers."

"AWESOME!" I shout.

"So, do you need any help at the moment?" Briares asks.

"No, they need their first weapons," Marsy shakes his head. "I think I know my way around the store well enough."

"Okay, good. I have some more customers that I need to tend to." Briares wades off through the shelves and soon disappears.

I smile. "I like him more than Jeff, I mean, King Maltadoris the Seventeenth." Marsy laughs and Thia just sighs. Marsy's laugh is REALLY obnoxious! Marsy runs off and Thia and I follow him. We reach the aisles marked "Special Weaponry".

"Okay, this isn't the normal swords and such. There are scepters, but I already have a scepter, so you can't have one. They also have crossbows, boomerangs, some rifles, daggers . . ." Thia and I are already looking through the aisle as he rambles.

"Mar, these are just household items!" Thia shouts.

Marsy shakes his head. "They're disguised so that mortals don't realize that we have weapons. Don't you think they'd be a little scared if they did figure this out?" We both nod and continue to look through the items. Thia grabs something off the shelf. She shows it to me. It looks like a purse, but she unzips it and throws it away from us. A huge explosion occurs and then the purse appears back in her hand, zipped.

"SWEETNESS!" I shout. Thia nods. Marsy just groans at the two of us acting like excited three-year-olds. I find a bottle of perfume.

"Hey, Marsy, this looks like it's for you!" I shout, spraying it on him.

"No . . don't . . . sp-" Marsy starts but he crumples to the ground unconscious or asleep before he finishes. I laugh.

"We need to revive him," Thia points out.

"Are you sure?" I pout. I don't want my fun to be ruined! Thia nods and looks through the shelves. She finds a reverse and sprays it on him. Marsy wakes up looking murderous.

"As soon as you find a weapon, we're going to duel, Lanty!" he challenges.

I grin. "Aren't you afraid of getting beaten up by a girl?" I smirk. Marsy glares. Thia picks up a comb. She glances at the instructions before bending it and throwing it. The comb flies far and accidently hits another customer in the head before flying back to Thia. Awesome! A comberang! Yeah, that sounded a lot cooler when I didn't coherently think it.

"I like this!" Thia says, throwing it again but not towards a person this time.

"Good, now we can find a weapon for Lanty," Marsy says. "But I'm not sure that I trust her with sharp objects or weapons of any sort." He glances at me. I stick out my tongue and run over to the sword aisle. Some of the swords are just plain swords. I stab a few training dummies with them, but it doesn't feel right. I try to use this sword that is originally a pen. It says it's modeled after some sword named Riptide. Whatever that is. The sword is still unbalanced. Finally I find two bobby pins after trying countless swords. I pick them up and try to get them to change into swords. Marsy comes up behind me.

"Breathe on them," he whispers.

"How do you know that?" I hiss.

He points to the product label. It reads "To change into swords: breathe on bobby pins." I slap him quickly before breathing on the bobby pins. Suddenly, I have two lightweight swords in my hands. "Hunting swords," Marsy gasps. I glance at him, but soon turn with a swirl and slash a dummy. No, not Marsy, an actual training dummy. Although I wish it was Marsy. The cotton dummy rematerializes almost instantly. I turn and slaughter three more dummies before facing Marsy.

"Are you ready for that duel?" I grin, feeling invincible. Swords will do that to you. Marsy gulps with his eyes wide but nods nevertheless. We walk over to the training area and turn to face each other. Marsy gulps again and looks at the two swords in my hand. I have already adapted them to my fighting stance. Wow, that is the nerdiest sentence I have ever thought before! "Okay, so what do we do?" I've never actually dueled anyone if that wasn't already obvious. I'm in seventh grade, as my teacher says, "Seventh graders are all Captain Obvious!" I look at Marsy again to make sure that he's not lunging towards me in attack mode or something.

"You just bow and then fight." I copy Marsy's orders and step back a few paces to stare him down. His scepter is braced in his two hands. He lunges. I slide to the side and slash at him with my sword. It doesn't hit him because that might kill him, but he drops back. I am on the offense now and I slash recklessly and wildly. Marsy dodges and slams my thigh with the scepter. Uh . . ouch? I swing around and notice that Marsy is off balance. He's definitely leaning to the left. I face towards his left side and he lunges, but I change directions and move to the right. Marsy turns, but he falls on his back. I shove one of my swords to his throat. "Surrender!" I order.

"I surrender," he sighs. There was no chance of him getting out of that. I help him up and we walk back to Thia. "Never try to defeat a daughter of Athena in a fight, Willy."

"Huh?" Marsy asks.

"Like Free Willy. Whales. Ocean. Are my jokes that hard to get?!?" I sigh. Thia grins but Marsy punches me on the shoulder lightly.

"Let's go," he orders.

Thia glances around. "WAIT!" she shouts. She runs off and comes back with the comb and the teal purse-bomb.

"She gets TWO things?!?" I gasp.

"Of course I do!" Thia grins.

Marsy rolls his eyes. "You two are impossible. Thia can have two things because you are getting a cooler weapon."

"It's not fair," I pout.

Thia smirks. "Life isn't fair!" I stick my tongue out at her, but she just ignores it and Marsy doesn't seem to mind her sudden personality change. "Don't be such a whiny-baby, Lanty," Thia smirks. "Maybe one day you'll be as great as me, but that day is not coming anytime soon. I get two things, because that's how awesome I am."

"You're such a jerk!" I shout at her. Thia just skips off to the counter that Briares is watching us from.

"Do you have everything?" he asks.

"Yes," Thia grins handing over the stuff. I show him my swords.

"Great. You get the demigod discount, so . . . it's free." Thia grins again and saunters off. I am trying to calculate how hard and at what angle I need to throw my sword to spear her. "Bye! Please come back soon!" Briares waves.


	7. Mar Says a Bad Word

Mar Says a Bad Word

We walk out of the store, and I'm content with my two awesome weapons. Did I mention the teal purse is COACH?!? And it's TEAL, my favorite color! And it's also a Coach purse! Did I tell you that it's a teal Coach purse?!? And the comb matches the purse. But, uh, Lanty got swords. Lanty and swords don't mix well. Last time she got that one Nerf sword . . .

"Mar, why did you let Lanty get a sword?" I squeal. "That is very immature!!!"

Mar looks down at the ground, unable to meet my eyes. "Um, uh . . . I don't know. Maybe she'll be more mature?"

"Uh, yeah, that's wishful thinking on your part. Or no thinking at all! Whatever," I wave it off. "Okay, Mar, where are the mopeds?" I ask him.

"Uh . ." he glanced around the parking lot. "I really don't know."

"WHAT?!?"

"I forgot, okay? You don't have to freak out about it!" He looks around for a second, then remembers something and peeks into his pocket. He pulls out a thin canteen filled with a really small amount of golden liquid. Lanty runs up behind me.

"EW, what is that?!?" she asks.

"It's nectar."

"Are you sure? Because it looks a lot like pee!"

"Gross! You are sick, Lanty!" I shout. Mar just shakes his head and groans. He mutters a curse in Greek. Strangely, I understand him. "Why did you just tell us to lick your Pegasus?"

"It's a curse. It's supposed to be really offensive, but I guess not. I'm running low on ambrosia and nectar! Hold on a second while I run inside and ask Briares for a refill." He runs inside the building again.

I look at Lanty. She looks content. A little too content. "What's got you so happy?" I ask. She grins and pulls out the bottle of perfume.

"You STOLE the perfume?!?" I hiss.

"It isn't stealing if everything's free, MEATHEAD!"

"Yeah, but what if Briares had it reserved for someone special or something?!?"

Before Lanty could respond, Mar walked out of the store with a Ziploc bag with seven squares of something I assumed was ambrosia, and held his canteen, filled back up to the brim with that golden liquid and had two others in his hand. "Ew, what is in that canteen?"

"Nectar."

"It's YELLOW! It looks like pee! Why are you trying to make us drink pee?!?" Lanty shrieks. "That is low, Marsy!"

"No, again, it is NOT pee! It is nectar, the beverage of the gods!"

"Yeah, whatever."

Mar smiled at us, but then he saw the bottle Lanty had clasped in her hand. "If you spray that at me again, I swear," Mar begins, but Lanty sprays the perfum directly in his face, "I'm . . sooooo . . . . . . gonna . . . kill." Mar collapses to the ground, unconscious, and drops everything.

"What the heck was that for?!?" I hiss, turning to her.

Lanty shrugs. "I don't know. I'm still kind of angry at him for forgetting where the mopeds are." I roll my eyes, then look back at Mar.

"Aw, he's so cute when he's sleeping," I coo.

Lanty snorts. "Thia, you always think he's cute. Besides, he's not cute. His left ear is shaped like a duck's head and one of his eyes is higher than the other, and his nose is oddly-shaped." I raise my eyebrows at her, skeptically. Lanty just nods in confirmation. "So, he can't be cute!"

I contemplate punching her but decide against it. Lanty can hit HARD! "We can't go anywhere without him."

"Let's just leave him here. I don't think anyone would mind. I mean, other than the fact that they might be appalled by his oddly-shaped ear! But you can look past that."

"Shut up!" I think for a second then tell Lanty, "Wait here!" I run over to the fountain with the huge water bottles, that are about one hundred fluid ounces each or something, stacked neatly beside it. I grab one, fill it up, and run back over to Lanty and the comatose Mar. "Here," I say, handing the bottle to Lanty. "Splash a little of this at him. He's the son of Poseidon, so it should help." Lanty takes the bottle from my hand. I look around for anybody, but when I turn back to Lanty, I see her throwing the actual water bottle at Mar. It hits him on the head. "What was that for?!?" I ask.

"He was asking for it. I mean, making me look at his oddly-shaped ear ALL DAY. That's just cruelty!"

"Would you stop obsessing over his ear!"

"Can I cut it off?" Lanty asks. I scoff and splash some of the water on him. He spluttered a bit and woke up. I turn to look at what Mar brought from the store. I pick up the Ziploc bag and turn back around. I see Lanty pouring the whole bottle of water on him. She also has her swords out, which can't be good.

"Lanty, what are you DOING?!?" I ask.

"I thought that he needed some extra help." Lanty says, gleaming mischievously. "Those two little drops of water that you poured on him aren't doing anything!"

Mar's eyes snap open. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!?" he yells. "If something had happened, you could've DIED!"

"What is that supposed to mean?" Lanty challenges. "If I remember clearly, I just beat you in a duel. Just because you found us doesn't mean you have to watch us every single stinking second!"

"Mar, you're alive!" I shout, running over to him. He raises his eyebrows in a "Well, duh!" expression. "Sorry."

Mar looks back at Lanty. "I DO have to watch you every single second. I'm on a mission! As soon as I found out you two were demigods, I have had to protect you! If anything happens to you, Athena will most likely get Zeus to zap me with lightning and I'll probably be shunned from camp!"

"Hey, can I watch that? Because it would be AWESOME to see you zapped by lightning! You'd probably start flopping around, and your hair would look funny!"

"SHUT UP, LANTY!"

"You don't have to protect Pretty Boy just because you like him!"

I blush crimson. "I don't like him! But it's obvious that we need him! Now, Mar, just freakin' GET OVER IT and just GO FIND THE MOPEDS NOW!!!!!" Mar looks a little intimidated and scurries off away from the parking lot.

Lanty gives me an approving glance. "Impressive . . ." she muses, "but she still has a lot to learn before she becomes as threateningly awesome as me. She could learn some better insults. Maybe after my ten-week program for only $5.99 a week, she'll be a truly intimidating person. She could use some work on the mean part. The demanding portion is already complete with her." I roll my eyes, and we follow Mar's path. "LOOK, THIA!" Lanty yells.

"One second!" I shout back as I look for Marsy.

"NO! YOU NEED TO LOOK NOW!!!"

Annoyed, I stomp over. "WHAT?!?!?" I growl.

"It's a bush." She smiles innocently. I shove her, and she shoves back a lot harder. We have a mini shoving match while walking through the parking lot.

We finally find Mar, but he doesn't look too good. His skin is pale white. His face is frozen in a horrified stare.

"Is he dead?" Lanty asks excitedly.

"NO!" Mar shouts, unfreezing.

"What is it, Marsy?" I say in a somewhat gentler voice than before.

He points behind us and softly stutters, "I th-think I know wh-wh-where the mop-p-peds are, Th-Th-Thia." With a sickening feeling in my stomach, I slowly turn around. I gape in horror at three HUGE bird-women in front of me. They all have a human neck and face, and two have shiny brown hair and blue eyes, and one has red hair and brown eyes. One the other hand, each also has a bird body, with ugly grayish-brown feathers. Their broad wings keeps them hovering in the air while they sneer at us. They wail lamentations, and it makes your head just about crack from the ugly noises. In their claws they hold the mopeds. "Harpies..." Mar groans. "Get your weapons out."

I pull out my comb. I throw it at the one with orange hair. It smacks her across the face and lands back in my hand. These things are just TOO COOL. She wails and drops the moped to tend to her injury. The moped has fallen by at least 100 feet. It's completely totaled, everything smashed to pieces. I hope the owners had moped insurance. The other two look at their sister, I think, then narrow their eyes at me. They swoop down, trying to bite off my head or something.

Mar pulls his scepter out of his pocket, mutters an incantation and catapults it at one of the creepy bird-people. It misses by a few inches, and their attention is diverted from me to Mar. The one he was aiming at plunged towards the ground and snatched up Mar. Mar starts to freak and Lanty laughs, rolling around on the ground. ROTFL!

Lanty has her two hunting swords in her hands, ready. As a Harpy dives towards her, she does this awesome sequence of moves and scares off the Harpy. I applaud, and she takes a bow. I laugh.

I yank my teal purse off my shoulder, unzip it, and launch it at the three Harpies. They dodge it easily, but a HUGE explosion startles them, courtesy of my purse, and the one holding Mar drops him. The purse comes back to me, zipped. Mar falls to the ground. "MAR!!!" I shriek.

"YAY!" Lanty shrieks. Then, she launches one of her hunting swords at a bird-lady. It skewers her, and she screeches in pain before exploding into purple, yellow, blue and green dust. Lanty does a victory dance. The sword reappears in her hand a few seconds later.

While the Harpies are distracted, Lanty and I run over to Mar. He looks horrible. He's covered in dust, and has bloody scratches everywhere on his body. His arm is twisted around completely.

"Are you okay? You look horrible," I ask.

"He always looks horrible, Thia. That one strange ear . . . I hope he's dead."

"He's not dead. He might have some sort of fatal injury!"

"Oh, I'm sure he's perfectly fine, Thia. Just a couple of scratches and a broken arm," Lanty answers for him. I ignore her comment.

Mar sits up. "I'm fine, Thia. HEY! My water senses are tingling!"

"Thank you, Spiderman," Lanty rolls her eyes. "Now, let's get back to the task at hand!"

Mar shakes his head, "No. Listen, we are near some beach or a port. Most likely Charleston."

"How do you know? We don't have any maps or anything!"

"Thia, I'm a son of Poseidon. I think I'd know if we are near water."

"Fine. But how do we get out of here and to the beach?" I ask.

"Okay, so if you can, destroy the Harpies. Then we need to run."

"Why didn't we think of that before?" Lanty says sarcastically.

"Then when we get to the beach, we'll have to make sure we... " he trailed off and fell back to the ground.

I look at him, bewildered. "Mar? Mar???" I shake him. "MAR! GET UP!!!" I look at Lanty. "What happened to..." Oh gods. She's snickering evilly. "WHAT DID YOU DO???" I hiss. She smiles and pulls out the perfume and I smack my head with the palm.

I take a deep breath. Okay, it's not as bad as it could be. Oh, who am I kidding. "ATALANTA THALIA CLARK!!!" I yell.

"ILYTHIA CALLIOPE CLARK!!!" she yells back.

"Why the heck did you spray him with the perfume?! AGAIN?!"

"Well, it added more drama to the moment! I didn't think he should get away with just having a broken arm. And I kinda wanted to see your reaction, like if you'd be all 'OH MAR, WHATEVER HAS HAPPENED TO YOU, MY LOVE???'." Lanty strikes and dramatic pose and then grins. I groan.

"Yea but he was going to tell us something important!"

"COME ON, Thia! We are daughters of Athena. We can figure it out without Marsy!" I nod slowly.

"Yea, I guess. Okay. But let's do at least what Mar said first." I spin around and get my weapons ready. Suddenly I get a crazy idea. I tie the strap of my teal purse to the comb, unzip the purse, and launch it at a Harpy. There's an explosion from the purse that distracts her and then the comb smacks her on the head. Then, Lanty throws her sword and spears her. I high-five Lanty. We are UNSTOPPABLE, baby!

The last Harpy is smarter than her sisters, though. She'd watched us fight her siblings and had learned our techniques. She dodged EVERY FREAKIN' SINGLE THING we threw at her. I managed to somehow get her a bit disoriented. Probably the awesome purse-bomb comb combination. "Okay," I say. "We need to RUN, but we need to get Mar out of here, too. Any ideas?"

"Can we just PLEASE leave him here? PLEASE?!?!" she begs.

"NO!"

"Aw! You're no fun!" Lanty mutters crossly.

"Okay..." I say to myself. "Mar said there's a port of a beach near here. We could get him in water, and it could probably wake him up. So we just need to get to the beach!" I exclaim. "Come on, Lanty, help me drag him away, but we need to be fast, since there's that Harpy."

We each take one of Mar's arms and drag him across the ground. Lanty keeps on "accidentally" dropping Mar on his head, and he mutters a curse every now and them in his sleep. We drag him across for a couple of yards, then pass through some thickets of trees. When we get through, we're standing in sand. I can hear sea gulls and sounds of the waves. "Wow. His water senses are good."

I tell Lanty to drag Mar into the water. I turn around for a few minutes and soon hear a huge 'SPLASH!'. I spin around to see Mar about seven feet into the water. Lanty stands near the water, giggling evilly. She sees me and exclaims, "WHOOPS! I thought you said throw Marsy far, far away into the water. Sorry."

"Whoa, you can throw a person seven feet?" I ask.

Lanty smiles and nods. "Yep! My friends, Thunder and Lightning, help." She shows off her arms jokingly.

Mar jerks up. His arm is healed over, along with his scratches. He looks a heck of a lot better. "LANTY!!!" he screams. "WHAT THE FRICK?!?!"

Lanty gasps. "You said a bad word! HE SAID A BAD WORD!!!" She runs to me and begins jumping up and down excitedly. "HE SAID A BAD WORD! HE SAID A BAD WORD! MARSYAS ACHILLES WILKES SAID A BAD BAD BAD WORD!"

"It's not a bad word! It's a substitute."

"Just as bad."

"Would you rather I say the real word?"

"NO!"

"Well, how will we get to Long Island Sound from here?" I ask Mar. "Why don't you like ask your dad for something, before we get, oh, I don't know, attacked by the bird-lady again!?"

"Okay, okay!" He's still a bit intimidated. Hahaha, this is kinda fun. Mar steps into the water. "Uh, hey Dad, um, so could we get, um, uh, something to, um, leave South Carolina? Please?"

"Ugh, you are PATHETIC! Just let ME do it." Lanty pushes him out of the water. "Hey, Poseidon! How're ya doing? This is Atalanta Thalia Clark, daughter of Athena, and I'm here with my twin, Ilythia Calliope Clark, and your son, Marsyas Achilles Wilkes. See, we need some help here, some transportation to Camp Half-Blood. And I know about the whole feud between our mom and you, but we kind of wanted to get rid of that feud. Plus, Marsy is a pathetic excuse for a demigod, so we'd maybe help him some. Otherwise he's doomed. So if you could be so kind as to send us something, we'd be very grateful."

Almost as soon as Lanty says that, a pirate ship pulls up to the port. "Thanks, Poseidon!" she shouts. The lime-green paint is peeling off, there are huge, purple, creepy smiley faces and red peace signs along the sides of the huge boat, and the ship is overall completely hideous. Someone has messily painted in neon pink letters, the name of the ship: _S.S. Science_.

But is even more confusing and bewildering is the person driving the ship. He adjusts his eye patch and stares at us a bit creepily. "Ahoy, Marsy, Thia, and Lanty. What are ye chiddlers up te? ARG!"

We just stare back in shock. Then we all utter one word in harmony: "Mr. Burns?!?"


	8. Biceps for Rent

**Hey! This is Lanty. So, Thia assigned for me to be the one that writes this chapter. And the next chapter. It's a little odd, but we must! Well, let's see what trouble our young adventurers can get into. Let's recap what happened in the last chapter:**

**Marsy lost the mopeds (because he's an IDIOT!) Then, the three kids had to fight off Harpies (of which Marsy was no help AT ALL!) to get back the mopeds. But the mopeds were busted in the process. Then, Mr. Burns, their former science teacher, came up in a pirate ship. (A gay pirate ship!) Now, let us begin.**

**Now, for anybody who has an opinion, we have a question. Would you rather have Lanty/Marsy or Thia/Marsy?**

**Disclaimer: We don't own much. We don't own **_**Monopoly: Here & Now**_** or **_**Mission Impossible**_**. We also don't own you. Or do we?**

**Okay, in case you don't know, we mentioned **_**Monopoly: Here & Now**_** in this chapter. That's like Monopoly except the money is 5,000,000; 1,000,000; 500,000; 200,000; 100,000; 50,000; and 10,000. So that's how it is used. Just to clear that up.**

**Here's a conversation we had randomly over text.**

**Thia: HEYYYY**

**Lanty: hi. what up?**

**Thia: nothing much. princess bride is rele annoying cuz it says NOTHING. it wouldve been good but it tells us nothing important. westley sounds hot.**

**Lanty: haha. cross out buttercup and put emogal.**

**Thia: LOL IKR! hahahaha gay book. hate it. if we make a movie then we should have her all emo and him all awesome. i mean he sounds HOTTTT. AND hes a pirate.**

**Lanty: ha! YES!**

**Thia: lol**

**Lanty: i call the troll! who wuld be westley?**

**Thia: ummmm...idk. IM BUTTERCUP XD **

**Lanty: is it really that awful!**

**Thia: hahahahahahahahahahaha. sooooooo who would b westley? a hot pirate. hmmm...eyedeekay. wbu?**

**Thia: and it should b a guy cuz thats just awkward. xDxDxD oh and prince HUMPerDInCK. hump dick xD**

**Lanty: oh i was thinking humper dick but that works 2**

**Thia: LOL**

**Lanty: hot pirate? ORLANDO BLOOM!**

**Thia: hahahaha well idk we can afford that lol. well whos a guy who would b willing to act in our awesome video?**

**Lanty: gavin or connor.**

**Thia: eww. im not makin out with them.**

**Lanty: u can stage kiss or not kiss at all idiot! anyway, i could get a horse if absolutely necessary.**

**Thia: oh. okay then. ill do it hahaha. connor's too short. gavin's too ugly. who would look best in a pirate costume gets the part.**

**Lanty: gavin looks better in a pirate suit. connor culd be humperdinck (Notice that she doesn't question how I know this.)**

**Thia: LOL yea it could work.**

**Lanty: do we need a horse? preferably a dark brown one.**

**Thia: LETS PUNCH CAPTAIN CRUNCH THEN WELL EAT HIS FACE 4 LUNCH FLY A KITE DRINK SOME SPRITE TIL WE GO 2 SLEEP 2NITE TIK TOK FOUND A ROCK GONNA KNOCK THIS POSERS SOCKS OFF WOAH THEYRE PURPLE WOAH OHHH**

**Thia: yea. not really. it depends on the scene.**

**Lanty: can u get on chat?**

**Thia: no:(**

**Lanty: kay we culd still use the horse though. do we need a very small dragon?**

**Thia: lol idk DEPENDS ON SCENE**

**Lanty: kay. um . . . is the book really as stupid as u say. i'm scared now.**

**Thia: i can can chat 2marro tho btw**

**Thia: not that bad just couldve been longer and has too many authors notes **

**Lanty: huh? wat do u mean author's notes? hey if we wer gonna make a movie of outsidrs Nstead my gocart makes a good blu car.**

**Thia: we can do both if u want**

**Lanty: nope cuz they gotta b different projects.**

**Thia: nooo like one is urs and one is mine!**

**Lanty: kay. that works.**

**Thia: Kay.**

**Lanty: hav u finished the book?**

"Climb aboard, mateys!" Mr. Burns calls down to us. So that's why he had the eye patch! I knew that it wasn't just because he was attacked by a pit bull as a young child. Pit bulls are nice and playful. "Where ye be going, mates?"

I look up at the hideous man that had taught me for about three days. He has awful grammar. Any English teacher would have a heart attack if they heard him speak. "We're going to New York," Marsy answers. "Long Island, to be exact."

"Aye," the man says. "It be a long journey from there to here. I'll take you nice and quick, I will. Just get in the ship. I know the way. I know the way good. Been there meself many times." I roll my eyes at his oddness. Thia seems to think the same thing.

"Should we trust him?" I whisper to my comrades. "I think he's a little shady. And his boat is horrific. He's not even flying the Jolly Roger."

Thia shrugs. "Does anybody have a better plan? No? Then we should trust him. He's too stupid to do anything bad. I just think that it's a little odd."

"We don't have anything to lose. We should go with him," Marsy says. I glare up at our former science teacher. "Besides, he's apparently a privateer. He's flying the flag of the US, which means that he is protected under national law. He's not a real pirate."

"You mean he's not even a real pirate? Why would we ever want to get in a ship with him? I WANNA MEET A PIRATE!" I shout. Thia and Marsy both back up with their hands in a surrendering position. "You two are fails!"

"Sorry, Lanty. We try to be fails. It's really hard for us." I roll my eyes. Failure is probably a sixth sense for him. Thia, too. Just look at the major fail she's in love with. "So, we're gonna get on the pirate ship. Good. Let's go."

"Hey, Mr. Burns," Thia says, looking up at the creep-o who we are about to be on a boat with. "It's good to see you. But . . . uh, why are you here exactly? Shouldn't you be back at school teaching?"

"Shouldn't you be back at school learning?" he shoots back. Thia blushes and steps back. Marsy doesn't look like he's going to answer in the next century.

I smile. "We _were_ going to be at school, but we thought that we might see you there, so we decided to skip. Alas, we still have the misfortune of glancing upon your horrendous being in disgust. Aye, it must be that Marsyas is cursed."

"Will ye be cummin' aboard, ungrateful brute?" Mr. Burns growls.

"We respectfully accept your gracious offer to aid our trek to New York, though it is an inconvenience. Nay, nay, we were to be traveling on the finest vessel this sea has to offer. It would be troublesome for us to travel with you. Of course, we could possibly assist the finances of this journey, if you understand what I am suggesting."

"What ship were ye ta be goin' on, miss?"

"We were to be going on the mighty _Trident_. Such a pity that we could not go on that. It has left without us. Aye, it is only fortuitous that we should have gotten a complete refund for our voyage."

"Well, mateys, I would like ter take ye. But this ship don't pay fur itself. It gotta get sum money from somewhere. Culd ye possbly . . . pay me fur yer trip?"

"Oh, aye, that would be splendid. We would never want to take advantage of a respectable man such as yourself. We are resolutely willing to pay twenty million dollars for this voyage. We also must debate the terms in a more private location. There are quite a few requirements we have before we dare to let this ship set sail. All money paid in full before the ship leaves this port."

Mr. Burns seems interested at the mention of twenty million dollars. Thia and Marsy seem to think that I could possibly be insane. I do not take notice of them. Mr. Burns gestures for us to step onto the deck.

"Now, chiddlers, I'll take ye. It'd be me pleasure. Let's step into me office. Right this way, Mademoiselles and Monsieur." He begins to walk and I follows him obediently. Thia and Marsy seem a little unsure of how I was going to pay and what I was doing. Nevertheless, they follow. "Here's me office. Make yerself at home. I'll be back in a second."

We sit down in the chairs. Well, there are two chairs, so Marsy and I sit down. "Hey, what about me?" Thia whines.

"You can sit in Marsy's lap," I taunt. She doesn't seem to find the humor in this. I grin impishly.

"There's always room on Santa's lap," Marsy says, patting his lap. I gag and she moves over to the corner of the room. "Eh, don't worry. You can have this chair anyway." Marsy stands up and Thia jumps up to sit in the chair that he vacates. Marsy walks over and looks at me as he stands above the chair. "If you don't give me that chair, I'm going to sit on you."

"You wouldn't _dare_," I hiss. He turns around as if he really were going to sit in my lap. "I am the one with the plan. Don't anger me. Can't we just share the chair?"

I scooted over and he sat down next to me. Thia was glaring daggers at me; she would kill to be in the same position as me. I just might kill to get out of this position. Before I could grab the knife on the desk, Mr. Burns walked in.

"Well, mateys. Me name isn' Mis-tur Burns in case ye didn' know. Me name is Black Poodle. So none of this Mis-tur business. So, I heerd sum talk of ye havin' money. Finances er tight 'round here, ya know. If ye could help me out."

"I believe I spoke of a profuse sum of money for this passage. It will be paid in full to you. There will be twenty million dollars. The money is for the voyage of the three of us. However, we would not even pay this much for the finest cruise in all of the Caribbean. Therefore, we expect the best treatment you can offer, the best rooms in the entire ship, and every comfort that we could possibly desire. Should that be a problem for you and your crew?"

"No, little mistress. It should be no truble at all. Anything ye want, little mistress. But, er, there may be a slight truble with yer requests. Ye see, we's had a . . . problem with rats laterly. I only has one room that is fit fer yerself an' yer mates."

"That shouldn't be a trouble, unless we so choose to make it a trouble. Ilythia and I are quite accustomed to sharing a room. Of course, the boy may probably be troublesome, but we shall deal with him. Yes, it is quite all right that there is only to be one room. Marsyas may just become quite cordial with the floor within the next few days."

"Aye, that be good. Now, we just have ter exchange money then ye be ready for yer voyage. So, do ye have this money on hand exactly at this moment?"

"Yes, sir. I must speak over it with my friends, if you do not mind. We have the money, but they seem to doubt my confidence. Please excuse us for the present moment."

We walk out of the room and into the hallway outside the door. Marsy and Thia turn on me. "How are you supposed to get twenty freakin' million dollars? We don't have that kind of money! What are you going to do? Pull it out of a hat?" Marsy asks.

"I have a plan, but I need you two to help me count the money. I have it in this pocket, okay? We'll be fine." I reach into my pocket and pull out a handful of bright colorful money. I show it to them on the floor.

"Lanty, this is _Monopoly: Here & Now_ money," Thia points out.

I grin wickedly. "Exactly. He only has one eye. He can't tell whether it's Monopoly money or real money!"

"He's not blind!" Marsy shouts loudly. These two are really, really stupid, aren't they?

I grin again. "He's not fully blind, but he is partially blind. Did you not notice the scratch on his eye? He probably can't see. I wouldn't be amazed if he is color-blind."

"That's crazy," Thia says.

"Give me some of your nail polish," I demand. She grabs two things of nail polish. They're the same color. "Good. Now, give me a second." I walk back into the office. "Black Poodle, which color nail polish is best?" I show him the two. He glares at them both before pointing to the one on the right. "Thank you."

I walk back out of the room. "He's definitely color-blind. He'll probably look for the number on the bill. Now, we need to add it up to twenty million, but we have to make it look as if there is a huge amount of money, right?"

"Aye," they both say at the same time. We start to count out money at random amounts to make it look as if many millions are in the bills. It all added up to twenty million dollars. We even threw in an extra ten thousand dollars in. Then, we went back to the office.

"Black Poodle, we have the money counted out and organized perfectly. We even came to the decision of adding in an extra ten thousand dollars because of how great you have been. We hope that you will accept it."

"Good, mateys. I'll just take yer money and show ye to the cabin. Now, just wait here. I got ter put it in me safe and I don't want ye chiddlers findin' me loot."

"Very well. We shall wait on the outside in the hallway. Please take any amount of time you need. We have important matters to discuss." Mr. Burns shoos us out of the doorway. I turn to my two comrades when we're out of the room. "Am I good or what?"

"Is there a third option?" Marsy asks. I stick my tongue out at him. "Seriously, he's probably going to find out that we're lying! Then we'll get thrown overboard."

"Stop worrying," I admonish. "Just trust me. If he hasn't figured out that it isn't real money yet, he never will. Now, we'll just get shown to our cabin and hang out there. Everything is going to be great."

"Oh, yeah, about that. Are you really going to make me sleep on the floor?" Marsy frets.

I roll my eyes. "Unless you want to share a bed with Thia." Their mouths both drop. "Just so long as we don't end up having to drag a baby around on this trip." And I thought that their mouths couldn't drop farther!

"S-She's just kidding. I hate you as much if not more than Lanty does," Thia says quickly. I give her a skeptical look as Marsy just looks like an idiot. Not that he ever doesn't look like an idiot.

"Yah, I know. You can't talk to Lanty for more than five minutes without finding out that she is extremely sarcastic," Marsy states. "She's quite cynical."

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," I groan.

Marsy smirks. "Exhibit A," he states plainly. I gag at his stupidity.

"Well, let's just wait for Mr. Burns—excuse me—Black Poodle now. He should be out soon and you two shouldn't be arguing when he's here," Thia commands. She can be bossy at times. It's Marsy's and my job to argue.

"Black Poodle is a gay name!" Marsy comments nonchalantly. He glances at his fingers as he makes this statement. "For a gay pirate."

"Are you making sure your nail polish hasn't chipped?" I tease. He makes a face at me, but I ignore him. "Whelp, here comes Black Poodle."

"Greetings, chiddlers. I'll show ye to yer cabin now. Wisht! Foller me. Dun' wait 'til I'm goan."

I raise my eyebrows. "I see that you weren' bahn in a laith, yah changeling!" Black Poodle looks confused at my words. "Don't pretend that you are familiar with the Yorkshire dialect when it is only posed," I shoot.

"How do ye know the Yorkie tongue?" he asks.

"_Wuthering Heights_. Quite an interesting read, if I may be a judge. I don't find it to be one of my favorites, though. _The Count of the Monte Cristo_ or _A Tale of Two Cities_ is more of the kind of book I like."

"Aye," the Black Poodle says. He still doesn't understand a word of what I say. "Well, here be yer cabin, mates. Settle yerselves then ye can 'ccompany me fur sup."

"Excellent," I say politely, changing back into my completely business tone. "We shall settle in though we don't have anything to settle. We shall meet you when convenience chooses so." Black Poodle walks away with his fat jiggling.

We all walk into the cabin. It definitely is not worth twenty million dollars. The beds are small and ragged. The sheets seem to be made of burlap, and the mattresses are still against the ground. The purpose of the bedsteads is not evident. It is hot and sticky in the room.

"This place is a wreck," Marsy comments.

"Thanks, Captain Obvious."

"You're welcome, Lieutenant Sarcasm." I roll my eyes. Some people just shouldn't try to be funny.

"This place needs some fixing up," Thia says. "I have some ideas, but I'm going to need your help." Marsy looks confused as to what we're going to do. I look at him.

"That's how we work," I explain. "I talk us in and out of things and come up with the devilish schemes. Thia fixes things that need to be fixed when I get us into things. I also am the spy of the family. You're going to have to find your own job around here."

Thia looks around the room. She begins to walk. "Ow! Splinter!" she shouts once. She hops over to one of the two mattress and inspects her foot. She pulls something out quickly. It is a splinter—a very long shard of wood. "That's going to need to be fixed. Well, there's two things we need to fix. The temperature problem and the splinter risk."

"Wait, why were you barefooted?" I ask quickly.

She looks down at her feet. "I-I . . . I don't know. I thought I had shoes on." She looks at our feet. "You guys don't have shoes on either! We lost our shoes during the fight with the Harpies!"

"Actually, I think I lost my shoes when Lanty threw me into the ocean," Marsy interrupts.

I grin. "I was returning you to your father, but not even he will keep you." Marsy rolls his eyes.

"Guys, STOP ARGUING LIKE TWO-YEAR-OLDS AND HELP ME GET THESE MATTRESSES AWAY FROM THE BEDSTEADS!" Thia shouts. Marsy's the two-year-old! Nevertheless, we walk over and lift the bedsteads away from the mattress. For idiots who don't know this, the bedstead is the wooden frame of the bed that a mattress lays on. But these bedsteads didn't have a bottom, so they were just a wooden frame that the mattress fell through.

Soon, we have the mattresses in one spot and the bedsteads on the other side of the room. "Good job. Now, Lanty, do you want to do the honors?" I nod enthusiastically. She gestures to the frames and I set to work.

I begin to tear the only thing apart. The nails rip away from each other. Marsy tries to help, but I growl at him. Soon, we have a lot of wooden boards and a pile of nails. "Excellent," Thia says. "Now, I'm going to need you two to go on a raid. We're going to need gears and anything metal that you can possibly think of."

Marsy and I nod. I guess sometimes we'll have to cooperate. We decide to go back to Black Poodle's office first.

"Black Poodle is definitely gay," Marsy whispers to me.

"Don't worry. We're all homos. Homo sapiens." Marsy snorts at this and we continue to the office. I begin to hum the "Mission Impossible" theme and creep along the walls. Marsy copies me and we go along the ship. Finally, we are near Black Poodle's office. Fortunately, he's not there. We go into the office and begin to search through the cabinets. We grab all sorts of objects: nails, screws, bolts, a screwdriver, a power drill (Marsy should be afraid), Black Poodle's pet rock, an electric pencil sharpener, a hammer, a stuffed-animal cat, and a random car tire. We then carry/roll (for the car tire) everything back to the cabin. We show it to Thia.

"Excellent, guys. I'm sure I can work with this." Marsy and I high-five. I need to remember to wash my hand later. "Okay, now go find quilts for the beds. Also, find a lot of Vaseline or wax. Both would be preferable."

"Aye, aye, Captain!" I salute. Marsy and I run back through the ship in search of quilts and wax.

"I think we have to go into Black Poodle's quarters," Marsy whispers to me. I nod and we creep along the corridors silently. Soon, we find a room that looks like it could be Black Poodle's bedroom. The big sign that said "BLACK POODLE'S QUARTERS, DO NOT ENTER" helped. "Let's go in," Marsy whispers. We quietly enter the room. Inside is very elegant. It is a billion-and-two times as good as our room.

There are quilts and nice sheets and a HUGE bed! There's also a nice writing desk that I would kill for. Then, there was a low trampoline with a circumference of about seven feet. Marsy and I grab a bunch of quilts. I bump into the bedside table as I pull one of the quilts off the bed. I giggle and show Marsy the pacifier I found on the table. He can barely hold in his laughter at this. As we are pulling the quilt off, I hear the doorknob click. Marsy hears, too, and we both dive under the trampoline.

If this was just short of a life-threatening situation, I would kill Marsy. But, we had to be squished right next to each other so that our feet didn't stick out of the end of the trampoline. Marsy moves his eyebrows up and down a few times in a flirtatiously joking manner. I punch him in the gut.

Black Poodle enters the room. "Argh! I need to go get me oatmeal, but I want ter jump on me trampoline for a bit first." Suddenly, something falls on me and practically knocks the breath out of me. Marsy and I roll out of the way as Black Poodle jumps a few more times. Then, he falls off. "Stupid tramp'leen. I'll go get me oatmeal." He left the room and we let out a sigh of relief.

As we crawl out from under the trampoline, Marsy turns to me. "Don't even try to tell me that you didn't enjoy being under that trampoline with me."

"Don' t even try to tell me that you don't hope that I enjoyed it," I shoot back. His face turns into a grim expression. We grab the quilts and race out of the room. Soon, we are back in our cabin. "We almost got caught!" I shout when we enter.

Thia jumps up in surprise. "You did?" she gasps. I nod enthusiastically.

"There we were, in the lair of the gruesome monster. He snuck up on us and we quickly had to hide in the darkest corners of his abode. He came and started sniffing around. When he passed by our hiding place, he sniffed and stopped. We held our breath and Barnacle Boy over here almost passed out. Then, he left!" Marsy rolls his eyes at this recollection.

"Yeah, well, Owl Girl wasn't much help either." I stick my tongue out at him.

"You two are so immature. At least you got the quilts." I pull out the assorted things of Vaseline I have in my pocket. "How did you get that?"

"I found it in his desk."

"Excellent." Thia grabs everything from us and puts the quilts on the mattresses. Then, she looks at the twenty large vats of Vaseline I had brought. "How did you carry all this?" she asks.

"I have my ways," I grin. They both look very scared, so I just leave it at that. Thia points to the ceiling.

"I devised a fan out of everything you brought from the first trip. It should be suitable." We look up and see an actual moving fan that is electric. It's amazing that she can devise these things! "Now, we're going to Vaseline the floor. It should keep away the splinters. Just be careful when you walk."

We all work and in an hour, the entire floor is very Vaseline-ated. All twenty vats are used up and now we have our own wax-skating rink.

"Yee haw!" I shout, sliding across the floor on my stomach in excitement. Marsy does the same thing and then Thia continues. We slide across the floor until Marsy looks at his watch.

"It's seven o'clock. Shouldn't we get some dinner now?" We both nod and stand up. "Somebody lead the way," Marsy says.

Thia pushes us aside gently and begins walking. We head back to Black Poodle's office. He's sitting in his gay chair at his gay desk all by his gay self. "Black Poodle, we are ready for our dinner," I announce. "We would like cheese pizza served on the finest china plates imported from Russia. We would also like Coca-Cola served in Spongebob cups. While we dine, we want you to play 'Solo' by Iyaz, 'In My Head' by Jason Derulo, 'Livin' on a Prayer' by Bon Jovi, 'Good Girls Go Bad' by Cobra Starship, 'Break Your Heart' by Taio Cruz ft. Ludacris, and 'Circle of Life' from _The Lion King_. Is that clear?"

Black Poodle nodded guiltily. He would probably be on pieTunes within the next three minutes.

"Good. We want all this in exactly seven minutes and twenty-three seconds. No more, no less."

"Yes'm," Black Poodle says. I dismiss him and smile at my friends.

"And you thought that this wouldn't work out. Now, let's go explore the ship for twenty minutes." I walk to the door and open it before stepping back to wait for the other two.

"But you said for Black Poodle to have the dinner ready in seven minutes, twenty-three seconds," Thia points out. I grin mischievously.

"That's his problem. We still have time to do something. I want to find out everything about this ship. Let's start by going down. Then we can go back up to the top deck. Okay?"

They both nod in agreement so I climb down the nearest ladder. Marsy follows and Thia is after him. "Don't worry, I'll catch you if you fall, Thia," Marsy teases. "I think I have biceps to spare."

"Do you buy them or rent them?" I tease. He looks down at me and grins. "Let's hurry, guys!"

I suddenly hear a muffled noise from down below. "What was that?" Thia asks. I am now at the bottom of the ladder and I turn around.

"I don't know."

"It's him. Black Poodle's back," comes a muffled whisper from somewhere. There is a little bit of scuffling. "Be good. We don't want him to hit us again." I walk down the long hallway and listen for more noises. I knock on a door quickly. "Please don't hurt us," comes a voice from behind the door."

I try the door and find it unlocked. The wooden slab swings open to reveal two people who are probably our age. "Who are you?" I ask quietly.

"I'm Michelle Griffin," says the girl who sounds to be about our age. "Um, I've never seen you. Are you here to buy us?"

"No. I'm a passenger on this ship. Black Poodle didn't tell us that anybody else was aboard."

"Are you a demigod?" the boy asks.

All three of us nod. The two teens look scared.

"They you are also captives on this boat. Black Poodle has us captured. He's going to sell us. As slaves. To the Africans."

We all gasp.

"Wait, I thought we used the Africans as slaves," I comment. Thia looks at me with a what-is-your-problem? look.

**What do you think? That's right, Mr. Burns is gay! Review or he will come into your room tonight and steal all your peanut butter! Now, let's see how our heroes escape this in the next chapter!**


	9. Water in Marsy's Knickers

**HEY!**

**We're back, and better (read, scarier) than ever! This chapter definitely proves it. Okay, review reply time and then a quick explanation. This chapter is in Lanty's point of view.**

**PurpleUnicornRulez ~ Greetings, friend. I'm glad that you enjoy this story. We enjoy it, too. And don't worry, the gay pirate will no longer terrorize you much more. Unfortunately, the guy he's based off still works at our school. (And it's creepy.) He has this stuffed raccoon that he insists we call Dante. And if you hurt Dante, you have to apologize and give him a hug. What a strange person.**

**HiThereSmiley ~ Alas! We are updating! And we still haven't decided about the whole Marlanta/Ilysyas thing. This chapter is . . . hm, I'm not quite sure what to say about it.**

**Slow . Thunder . and . Sweet . Rain ~ No peanut butter shall be stolen from thou. And of course, we are very funny people in real life. Your vote has been taken into consideration.**

**Now, we just wanted to quickly go over a couple of things with you guys.**

**Number one: Please review. It makes us happy. Less reviews = slower updates.**

**Number two: This story does get bloody and gory at times. Just be prepared. But, eh, what good story isn't?**

**Number three: School gets busy. Sometimes we can't update because of our MOUNTAINS of tests. But, seriously . . . who here thinks we actually study?**

**And finally,**

**Number four: Marsy is so sexy that he is uncomfortable with his body. He is SEXAYY! (Please, don't ask)**

"Hold up. So we're going to be _sold_ to Africans?" Marsy asks. It takes things a little while to sink in for him.

"Yes," the girl, Michelle, nods. "To be slaves."

Thia exhales. "And they only want demigods?"

"They think we're extra-hard-working. Plus, we can go to fight beasts that they don't like. A long time ago, Heracles helped them with a few things and—"

"WE DON'T CARE!" I shout.

"I do," Marsy retorts.

"No one cares what you do or don't care about," I frown. Marsy's lips press tight against each other angrily. "Okay, we need to find a way out of here. The safest form of conduct would be to kill Black Poodle, take over the ship, and travel to Camp Half-Blood. Then we can set up a mission with a group of other demigods, preferably brave, stealthy, dragon-fighting ones, to save any other demigods captured by Africans. What do you guys think?"

"Is there another option?" Thia asks.

I sigh and sarcastically drone, "Or we could let ourselves be enslaved and die in the hot sun within two months."

Marsy coughs. "Look, I have a plan, and it doesn't involve killing people."

"Which is why it will inevitably fail," I smirk.

"Look, all we have to do is convince Black Poodle to let us go. Maybe we could pretend to get sick. We'd be no use to the Africans then."

I raise my arms and jump around wildly. "I've got it! We, as in Marsy, Thia, and I, convince Black Poodle that we want something from some port. Then, when he stops to go get it, all five of us sneak out and commandeer another ship. We sail to Camp Half-Blood and continue on our merry way. If Marsy gets killed during the process, well . . . that's a sacrifice we'll have to make."

"No!" Thia shouts automatically. All of us turn to her with raised eyebrows. "I mean, we shouldn't steal. That's bad."

"Thia. In the past twenty-four hours, more or less, you've helped us destroy a ghost, kill our monster of a history teacher, steal mopeds, sneak into our own house, and kill harpies. The law is irrelevant now!"

"Well—ugh! Fine!"

Marsy groans. "Well, since it seems that we're in an Atalantan dictatorship, I'm going to go try my hand at my trick. You two can have fun murdering and what not."

Thia rolls her eyes. "We will!" I call after him. Then I turn with a smirk. "That kid won't make it ten seconds," I say to the others.

Michelle and her friend are still in utter amazement at our argument. "Oh, wait, who's he?" Thia asks politely.

"This is Ian," Michelle says.

I look at Ian sharply. "He looks like a strange person," I announce. "I believe that we should throw him off the boat." Ian's slightly shocked look turned into a glare in my direction. "Fine, you can stay . . . for a while. _Somebody_ has to clean the pots and pans."

"Lanty!" Thia shouts condescendingly. I put up my hands in self-defense. "You can't insult every single person we meet."

"I only insult the weird ones," I explain. Obviously she doesn't understand just how strange some of these people are. But that's Thia. Always trying to find the good in everybody. "Besides, he's a _guy_. And guys are . . . . abnormal."

Thia smirks. "I can't wait until you start dating. You'll probably end up walking home every time because you scared the guy off."

I wave off her strange comment. "Oh, please. I would never date such vulgar creatures. I plan on spending the rest of my life among the leprechauns. Or wolves. Whichever find me first." All three of them look at me as if I'm insane. "Okay, time to put my plan into action. Thia, to the bow! Make sure you're seen by nobody. Michelle, I'm going to need you starboard, belowdecks. And Ian, feel free to do whatever you want. Particularly if that involves abandoning ship."

"This is _never_ going to work," Michelle grumbles.

I stick my tongue out at her and run away. I notice that neither of them rushed to their stations. Imbeciles.

In three minutes, I am in our room. I quickly grab my amazing hunting swords. It's time to get serious. I creep by Black Poodle's office. He isn't in there, but I must be careful of absolutely everything. I climb to the deck of the boat. And quickly peer around. Marsy is over near the port bow. He will fail!

I creep around for a few more minutes, looking for Black Poodle. My swords are out and ready to kill. Or at least brutally maim.

I stop and look out over the ocean. Wow, a seagull! Distraction! I stare at the seagull. I feel like my life is just like the beautiful movements of that seagull. Not going anywhere, but . . . . oh, who am I kidding! I just want to injure somebody. I don't care about that stupid seagull _or_ the meaning of life.

I see Marsy walk over to Black Poodle so I inch closer to hear what they are talking about.

"Black Poodle, I am feeling ill. Could we stop and let me off? I believe I am seasick."

Black Poodle frowned. "Listen, junior. This ain't no carousel. You can't just get off and on whenever you want. So, I'm afraid we can't stop anytime soon." Marsy nodded stupidly. It's like he actually thought his plan was going to work. I told him from the start that it wouldn't work, but he NEVER believes me. Stupid junior.

Black Poodle walks away. I stride up to Marsy. "I see that that went well." VERBAL IRONY! VERBAL IRONY! It's verbally ironic!

He glares at me. "Oh, shut up!"

"Hey, one man's failure is another, very much more awesome, girl's entertainment. And after a fail that epic, I won't need entertainment for _months_. 'This ain't a carousel, junior'."

"I hate you."

"I'm used to it . . . . junior," I shove him with my awesome strength and he falls . . . . . off the side of the boat. Win.

"Man overboard," I mutter to myself with a smirk.

...

I sneak around a little bit more, just for added effect. Then, I see Black Poodle walking around. I prowl around the deck for a few seconds more before walking up to him.

"My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." He looks at me quizzically. "Just kidding. I hated that book. But, yeah, I'm actually going to have to kill you."

"But I didn't have enough time to do science!" he whimpers.

"Well, too bad. Live like you're dying and all that stuff. Geez. But, I found out about your whole slaves and sending us to Africa thing. And that just doesn't roll with me. So I decided, I would kill you. I mean, it's the easiest way. Don't you think?"

He smirks. "Your plan isn't going to work. For you see, there's the little problem of me having . . . . A SCALPEL!" He pulls out a small metal object.

I grab one of the bobby pins and breathe on it. One of my swords appears. "Fail," I laugh.

He smiles one more time. "But this scalpel comes fully equipped with . . . . A LASAH!" He shows me a button. I sigh.

"You just don't give up, do you? You're like an impertinent armadillo that just _insists_ on eating your food."

He sneers. "And, alas, Atalanta Thalia Clark, _you_ will be the one dying today."

Suddenly, Thia tackles him. "DIPLOMACY!" she shouts. This gives me just enough time for a quick downward slash. Soon, Black Poodle's head is rolling around on the deck.

"Charming," I frown. After a moment, I say, "Well, Thia, you might want to go save the drowning guy."

"Oh, Lanty, you are insufferable!"

"But you love me anyway."

She opens her mouth to argue, but Marsy shouts, "WATER'S GOING INTO MY KNICKERS!"

I shout back at him, "Stupid Yankee!"

I can hear him scowling. "Lanty, as soon as I get up there, you are so dead!" I look over the side and stick my tongue out at him. "Oh, you abhorrent girl! Why don't you go stick—" I never got to find out what I was going to stick and where (That's what she said) because I threw the closest thing to me at him. Hm . . . I didn't know this ship has spare anchors!

"Marsy, don't you have some kind of special water powers?" Thia calls to him.

The idea suddenly dawns on him, and then, my vision is blurred by a tornado of water. I splutter to get it all out of my mouth. "What the heck, Pretty Boy?" I shout.

He just smirks at me. Angered, I grab my swords that I had accidentally dropped on the deck and lunge at him. He doesn't have his scepter with him, so he has to grab a piece of wood. My swords cut through that with ease and I charge again. My swords are relentless. I cut his arms and legs and body. Thia screams.

Finally, I back off to see a bloody Marsy. I turn and storm away from the scene.

...

An hour later, I am sheltering in the captain's office. I hear a knock on the door.

"Enter if you dare!" I threaten ominously.

Thia walks in. "Lanty, I can't believe you." I open my mouth to say something, but she glares at me. "How could you do such a thing? Control your anger, gah! You could've killed him. The only reason he's alive is because he dove back into the water and was instantly healed. I can't . . . I just can't believe—you know what? I _can_ believe that you would do such a thing. You're too impulsive. It's like the thing with Big Sammy and the pencil. You don't think, Lanty. And it's going to end up getting you in trouble. Look, I know you and Marsy don't get along, but for once in your life can you suck it up and deal with it? Yes, we're stuck with Marsy for the next few days, but that doesn't mean you have to attempt to murder him. I . . . I don't know. Maybe I overestimated you. Maybe I thought you were mature, but obviously that was a lie. Just . . . grow up."

She stomped out of the captain's office.

Hm . . . that actually made me feel kind of bad. I have this weird feeling in my stomach. It's not pleasant. No . . . wait—it's just hunger. I haven't eaten in hours! I look through Black Poodle's cabinets and find an uneaten chicken sandwich. After sniffing for poison, I quickly eat it. Yum.

Wait—no, it's just my imagination. . . . . No, it's still there. Geez! Now half the boat's angry at me and I'm starting to have feelings. Can there be much worse with this world? My indifference to the world is basically my thing. It's the reason I'm not dead yet.

Sigh.

I guess I should go . . . ugh, apologize. Hm—yeah, I think I should apologize to that Ian kid for calling him weird. Whelp, I'm off.

I walk to the deck. There, Ian is walking around. I head over to him. "Ian, I'm sorry I called you strange. I guess I just underestimated you. You're much more of a loser than I thought at first!" He had almost looked pleased at first, but that quickly changed.

Eh, I guess I can go make sure I didn't damage anything vital with Marsy. Cuz if I did . . . . well . . . . . THAT WOULD BE AWESOME!

I head to the belowdecks where I suspect he'd be. I head to our room and open the door. There he is, lying on the bed. He looks up when the door opened. Upon catching sight of me, he spazzes and falls off the bed.

I laugh. "You fell," I point out. Evil eye.

"Do you want to strangle me? Or maybe take my kidney?"

"Dude, chill. You're alive. It's not that big of a deal. I just scuffed you up a bit." He raises an eyebrow at me. My mouth drops. "How do you do that? Raise only one eyebrow? I can't do that, even if I focus for a really long time! How in the world do you do that?"

Marsy scoffs. "Gods, Lanty, you're so random."

I sigh. "Fine. Whatever. But I'm sorry for almost killing you. I mean, what was I thinking? Why didn't I just go ahead and put you out of your misery?" He frowns. "I'm kidding. Seriously. Okay, where was I? Sorry for almost kill, make lame joke. Oh, right. I just . . . freaked. So, do you think that maybe we can learn to stand each other? We're obviously going to have to be near each other for a while."

Marsy exhales slowly. "I suppose. I mean . . . I guess I should have realized it was your time of the month."

I scowl my best oh-you-are-dead-meat-but-I'm-too-lazy-to-kill-you scowl. "Don't even go there. So, I guess we can at least _try_ to stand each other, right?"

"Yeah. It's just . . . Athena and Poseidon."

"You and Thia make it work."

"Thia's . . . . different."

"So, we're cool?"

"Definitely." I put out my hand for a high-five. He reaches his out, too, but then we both pull back at the same time.

"Psyche!" we shout with laughter.

He grins at me and I nod before leaving the room.

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Yeah, I'm never doing that again.

**Hope people liked it! Of course, review. Or else Ian and his weirdness will show up in your sleep tonight. "GOOD MORNING!"**


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